The most curious fish of which I have ever read, were those of a lake attached to a Burgundian convent, and which were always of the same number as the monks. If one of these sickened and died, the same circumstance occurred with the fish; and if a new brother appeared in the refectory, there was also sure to be found a new denizen in the pond. These fish were, of course, piously inclined; but they did not come up, in that respect, to the parrot of Cardinal Ascanius, which could not only repeat the Creed, but could maintain a thesis! I believe that the Burgundian fish were principally perch; and they are an eccentric fish. Arthur Young says, that “about the year 1760, perch first appeared in all the lakes of Ireland and in the Shannon at the same time.”
As a singularity with respect to the cooking of fish, I may mention that observed by the Romans with the sepia, or “cuttle-fish.” They invariably took out the eyes before boiling it. It is in allusion to this custom that Trachalion says, in the Rudens,—
“Age nunc jam,
Jube oculos elidere, itidem ut sepiis faciunt coqui.”
I think I have read somewhere, that the cuttle-fish was esteemed a fitting sacrifice to the gods; but I do not know if pious people had their pet sepiæ, as they had their pet lambs and pigs, (“Sunt domi agni et porci sacres,” says the orthodox husband in the Rudens,) reared for the purpose of being offered at the altars.
The sturgeon is at this day, in China, reserved for the imperial table. At those of Greece it was introduced by sound of trumpet, and it was almost as esteemed a subject at those of Rome, until Vespasian condescended not to care for it, and to bring other fish into fashion. “It is caviare to the general,” is a proverb which Shakspeare has popularized. The caviare is the roe of the sturgeon dried; that of the larger sturgeon, which produces hundredweights of eggs, and tons of oil, is caviare for the general, and is not worth eating. The delicate white caviare is the produce of the smaller sturgeon, and it is highly esteemed by gastronomists. It forms a great portion of the food taken by the Greeks during their long Lent.
We have heard of an American who tried to tame an oyster. The Romans were more successful with their sea-eels, which would come when called, and feed from the hands of men, who occasionally fattened them upon live slaves. Vedius Pollio would have grown sick and disgusted, if he had been asked to eat one of these slaves; but he was particularly fond of the fish that had been fed upon such fare; and so he only ate his slaves at second-hand; for their flesh was declared by him to have greatly improved the taste of the eel. Epicures with less ferocious appetites preferred the fish that had been fattened upon veal steeped in blood. Vitellius put the fish altogether out of fashion by only eating the roes, which were procured for him at a great expense; and Heliogabalus caused even the roes to cease to be modish, by forcing them upon the Mediterranean peasants, who got as sick of their repasts as English servants in the Scottish Highlands grow weary of the everlasting sameness of their dinners consisting of venison and salmon. The Egyptians placed the sea-eel in their Pantheon; and even the unorthodox cannot deny that he was as good a deity as any to be found there; and we are told that among the Sybarites, the fishers and vendors of the eel were exempt from taxation! The origin of these honours is, however, unknown. Nearly as great were offered, even in Rome, to the fish known as the sea-wolf, which abounded in the most filthy parts of the Tiber, and which some epicures distinguished by the appellation of “child of the gods.” The Romans paid high prices for it, as they did for the regicide lamprey,—a fish which killed our first Henry, and which Italian cooks used to kill, as the murderers did maudlin Clarence, in his Malmsey butt, by plunging the victim, decked for the sacrifice with a nutmeg in his mouth, and a clove in either gill, into a pan of Candian wine; after which, covered with almonds, bread crumbs, and spices, he was exposed to a slow fire, and then to the jaws that impatiently awaited him. It was once as popular as the tunny,—a fish, by the way, which once so enriched the city of Sinope, that the coin minted there bore the figure of the fish. Where they are found at all, it is generally in shoals; but these are never to the extent which Pliny speaks of, when he says that they so obstructed the fleet of Alexander, that the pilots of the Macedonian madman were compelled to shape a different course; and though they are to be found in something like abundance in the Mediterranean, yet tourists who resort thither must not expect to see realized the gay picture of Vernet. It does not appear, however, that the tunny was ever in such favour at ancient tables as the eel, which was greedily eaten where it was not devoutly worshipped, or where medical ordinances had not been directed against it, as unfavourable to the weak of digestion, and perilous to those affected by pulmonary diseases. The pike, emblem of fecundity and example of lengthened years, was still less popular. The carp, which even surpasses the pike in fecundity, and is a long liver to boot, was, on the other hand, an especial favourite, but it was served up with sauces that would certainly not tempt a modern gastronomist to eat a fish which is seldom worth eating, and which is almost defiant of digestion. Carp, reduced to a pulp, and served up with sows’ paps, and yolk of egg, must have been as nasty as gold fish with carrots and myrtle leaves,—the delight of the Roman loungers at their “Blackwall,” on the Tiber. So the Greeks spoiled good cod by eating it with grated cheese and vinegar; and the Romans made perch more indigestible than it was before, by swallowing Damascus plums with it. But the ancients had strangely accommodating stomachs; a sauce of honey could induce them to eat cuttle-fish. Garlic and cheese made the swordfish delicacies; the rhombus floated into Greek stomachs on a sauce of wine and brine; the ladies of Rome ate onions with the muzil, and pine-nuts with the pilchard. The more refined Greeks, on the other hand, would not touch the pilchard; and the same difference of taste existed with regard to the loach; while, again, both Rome and Greece united in admiration of the gudgeon. To neither of these countries was the herring known. The Scots found the fish, and the Dutch bought, pickled, and sold, or ate them; and it is said that Charles V., in 1536, ate a herring upon the tomb of Beuckels, the first salter of that fish, and therewith friend of the poor, and enricher of the State. The profit realized by Holland exceeded two millions and a half sterling, annually. But neither Greece nor Rome felt the want of the herring while there was an abundant supply of the favourite oyster. This shell-fish was easily procured by the Greeks from Pelorus, Abydos, and Polarea; by the Romans, from Brindés, the Lake of Lucrinus, Armorica, and even from Britain. The Romans were hardly worthy of the delicacy, seeing that they abused it by mincing oysters, mussels, and sea hedgehogs together, stewed the whole with pine-almonds and hot condiments, and devoured the mixture scalding! Others, however, ate them raw, when they were opened at table by a slave; and the larger the fish, the more the Roman epicures liked them. They were not only eaten before a feast to stimulate the appetite, but during a banquet, when the appetite began to be palled. They excited to fresh exertion, and it was a cleaner custom (perhaps) than that imperial one of exonerating the stomach by tickling the throat with a peacock’s feather. The Bourdeaux oyster was the favourite fish of most of the Emperors. It is very inferior to the Whitstable oyster, however, and also to that which goes by the name of “Colchester,” and which is not caught there. The passion for the savoury fish is well illustrated in the epitaph which says,—
“Tom ——
Lies buried in these cloisters;
If, at the last trump,