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 it into the Pike, with the oysters, two cloves of
garlick, and take it whole out, when the Pike is cut off the spit; or,
to give the sauce a haut goût, let the dish into which you let the Pike
fall be rubbed with it: The using or not using of this garlick is left
to your discretion. M. B."
This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men;
and I trust you will prove both, and therefore I have trusted you with
this secret.
Let me next tell you, that Gesner tells us, there are no Pikes in Spain,
and that the largest are in the lake Thrasymene in Italy; and the next,
if not equal to them, are the Pikes of England; and that in England,
Lincolnshire boasteth to have the biggest. Just so doth Sussex boast of
four sorts of fish, namely, an Arundel Mullet, a Chichester Lobster, a
Shelsey Cockle, and an Amerly Trout.
But I will take up no more of your time with this relation, but proceed
to give you some Observations of the Carp, and how to angle for him; and
to dress him but not till he is caught.
The fourth day-continued
On the Carp
Chapter IX
Piscator
The Carp is the queen of rivers; a stately, a good, and a very subtil
fish; that was not at first bred, nor hath been long in England, but is
now naturalised. It is said, they were brought hither by one Mr. Mascal,
a gentleman that then lived at Plumsted in Sussex, a county that abounds
more with this fish than any in this nation.
You may remember that I told you Gesner says there are no Pikes in
Spain; and doubtless there was a time, about a hundred or a few more
years ago, when there were no Carps in England, as may seem to be
affirmed by Sir Richard Baker, in whose Chronicle you may find these
verses:
Hops and turkies, carps and beer,
Came into England all in a year.
And doubtless, as of sea-fish the Herring dies soonest out of the water,
and of fresh-water fish the Trout, so, except the Eel, the Carp endures
most hardness, and lives longest out of its own proper element; and,
therefore, the report of the Carp's being brought out of a foreign
country into this nation is the more probable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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