"Keep his liver," he says, "which you are to shred very small with thyme, sweet marjoram and a little winter savory; to these put some pickled oysters and some anchovies, two or three; both these last whole, for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not; to these you must add also a pound of sweet butter which you are to mix with the herbs that are shred, and let them all be well salted. If the pike be more than a yard long then you may put into these herbs more than a pound, or if he be less, then less butter will suffice. These being thus mixed, with a blade or two of mace, must be put into the pike's belly, and then his belly sewed up so as to keep all the butter in his belly if it be possible; if not, then as much of it as you possibly can; but do not take off the scales. Then you are to thrust the spit through his mouth and out at his tail; and then take four or five or six split sticks or very thin laths and convenient quantity of tape or filleting; these laths are to be tied around the pike's body from his head to his tail, and the tape tied somewhat thick to prevent his breaking or falling from the spit. Let him be roasted very leisurely and often basted with claret wine and anchovies and butter mixed together, and also with what moisture falls from him into the pan. When you have roasted him sufficiently you are to hold under him, when you unwind or cut the tape that ties him, such a dish as you purpose to eat him out of, and let him fall into it with the sauce that is roasted in his belly; and by this means the pike will be kept unbroken and complete. Then to the sauce which was within and also that sauce in the pan you are to add a fit quantity of the best butter and to squeeze the juice of three or four oranges; lastly you may either put into the pike with the oysters two cloves of garlic and take it whole out when the pike is cut off the spit; or to give the sauce a haut-gout, let the dish into which you let fall the pike be rubbed with it. The using or not of this garlic is left to your discretion." Surely the pike is the king of fishes when he is cooked in that fashion, and I doubt not a pond pickerel thus served becomes at least a prince. "This dish of meat," says Walton, "is too good for any but anglers or very honest men." I am sure it is none too good for pickerel fishermen, and when I think of it I do not wonder that they are fat. CHAPTER XXVI YULE FIRES