Score the fish on the back with a knife, and season them with salt and cayenne pepper. Cut some small onions in round slices, and chop fine a bunch of parsley. Put some butter into a frying-pan over the fire, and when it is boiling hot lay in the fish. When they are about half done put the onions and parsley into the pan. Keep turning the fish that the onions and parsley may adhere to both sides. When quite done, put them into the dish in which they are to go to table, and garnish the edge of the dish with hard boiled eggs cut in round slices.
Make in the pan in which they have been fried, a gravy, by adding some butter rolled in flour, and a small quantity of vinegar. Pour it into the dish with the fish.
This is the most approved way of dressing sturgeon. Carefully take off the skin, as its oiliness will give the fish a strong and disagreeable taste when cooked. Cut from the tail-piece slices about half an inch thick, rub them with salt, and broil them over a clear fire of bright coals. Butter them, sprinkle them with cayenne pepper, and send them to table hot, garnished with sliced lemon, as lemon-juice is generally squeezed over them when eaten.
Another way is to make a seasoning of bread-crumbs, sweet herbs, pepper and salt. First dip the slices of sturgeon, in beaten yolk of egg, then cover them with seasoning, wrap them up closely in sheets of white paper well buttered, broil them over a clear fire, and send them to table either with or without the papers.
Having cut off the head, tail, and fins, season the carp with salt, peppers and powdered mace, both, inside and out. Rub the seasoning on very well, and let them lay in it an hour, Then put them into a stew-pan with a little parsley shred fine, a whole onion, a little sweet marjoram, a tea-cup of thick cream or very rich milk, and a lump of butter rolled in flour. Pour in sufficient water to cover the carp, and let it stew half an hour.
Perch may be done in the same way.
You may dress a piece of sturgeon in this manner, but you must first boil it for twenty minutes to extract the oil. Take off the skin before you proceed to stew the fish.