In this way you may do Carp, Bream, Barbel, Chevin, Rochet, Gurnet, Conger, Tench, Pearch, Bace, or Mullet.
[ To hash a Pike.]
Scale and bone it, then mince it with a good fresh eel, being also boned and flayed, put to it some sweet herbs fine stripped and minced small, beaten nutmeg, mace, ginger, pepper, and salt; stew it in a dish with a little white wine and sweet butter, being well stewed, serve it on fine carved sippets, and lay on some great stewed oysters, some fryed in batter, some green with juyce of spinage, other yellow with saffron, garnish the dish with them, and run it over with beaten butter.
[ To souce a Pike.]
Draw and wash it clean from the blood and slime, then boil it in water and salt, when the liquor boils put it to it, and boil it leisurely simmering, season it pretty savory of the salt, boil it not too much, nor in more water then will but just cover it.
If you intend to keep it long, put as much white-wine as water, of both as much as will cover the fish, some wine vinegar, slic’t ginger, large mace, cloves, and some salt; when it boils put in the fish, spices, and some lemon-peel, boil it up quick but not too much; then take it up into a tray, and boil down the liquor to a jelly, lay some slic’t lemon on it, pour on the liquor, and cover it up close; when you serve it in jelly, dish and melt some of the jelly, and run it all over, garnish it with bunches of barberries and slic’t lemon.
Or being soust and not jellied, serve it with fennil and parsley.
When you serve it, you may lay round the dish divers Small Fishes, as Tench, Pearch, Gurnet, Chevin, Roach, Smelts, and run them over with jelly.
[ To souce and jelly Pike, Eeel, Tench, Salmon, Conger, &c.]
Scale the foresaid fishes, being scal’d, cleansed and boned, season them with nutmeg and salt, or no spices at all, roul them up and bind them like brawn, being first rouled in a clean white cloth close bound up round it, boil them in water, white-wine, and salt, but first let the pan or vessel boil, put it in and scum it, then put in some large mace and slic’t ginger. If you will only souce them boil them not down so much; if to jelly them, put to them some ising-glass, and serve them in collars whole standing in the jelly.