Perch.
First wipe or wash off the slime, then scrape off the scales, which adhere rather tenaciously to this fish; empty and clean the insides perfectly, take out the gills, cut off the fins, and lay the perch into equal parts of cold and of boiling water, salted as for mackerel: from eight to ten minutes will boil them unless they are very large. Dish them on a napkin, garnish them with curled parsley, and serve melted butter with them, or Maître d’Hôtel Sauce Maigre.
Very good French cooks put them at once into boiling water and keep them over a brisk fire for about fifteen minutes. They dress them also without taking off the scales or fins until they are ready to serve, when they strip the whole of the skin off carefully, and stick the red fins into the middle of the backs; the fish are then covered with the Steward’s sauce, thickened with eggs.
In warm water, 8 to 10 minutes; in boiling, 12 to 15 minutes.
TO FRY PERCH OR TENCH.
Scale, and clean them perfectly; dry them well, flour and fry them in boiling lard. Serve plenty of crisped or fried parsley round them.
TO FRY EELS.
[In season all the year, but not so well-conditioned in April and May as in other months.]
First kill, then skin, empty, and wash them as clean as possible; cut them into four-inch lengths, and dry them well in a soft cloth. Season them with fine salt, and white pepper, or cayenne, flour them thickly, and fry them a fine brown in boiling lard; drain and dry them as directed for soles, and send them to table with plain melted butter or anchovy sauce. Eels are sometimes dipped into batter and then fried; or into egg and fine bread-crumbs (mixed with minced parsley or not, at pleasure), and served with plenty of crisped parsley round, and on them.
It is an improvement for these modes of dressing the fish to open them entirely; and remove the bones: the smaller parts should be thrown into the pan a minute or two later than the thicker portions of the bodies or they will not be equally done.