Take two good handsome pikes, scale and draw them, and wash them clean from the blood, then put to them six quarts of good white-wine, and an ounce of ising-glass, boil them in a good large pipkin to a jelly, being clean scummed, then strain it and blow off the fat.
Then take a quart of sweet cream, a quart of the jelly, a pound and a half of double refined sugar fine beaten, and a quarter of a pint of rose-water, put all together in a clean bason, and give them a warm on the fire, with half an ounce of fine searsed ginger, then set it a cooling, dish it into dice-work, or cast it into moulds and some other coloured Jellies. Or in place of cream put in almond-milk.
[ To roast a Pike.]
Take a pike, scour off the slime, and take out the entrails, lard the back with pickled herrings, (you must have a sharp bodkin to make the holes to lard it) then take some great oysters and claret-wine, season the oysters with pepper and nutmeg, stuff the belly with oysters, and intermix the stuffing with rosemary, tyme, winter savory, sweet marjoram, a little onion, and garlick, sow these in the belly of the pike; then prepare two sticks about the breadth of a lath, (these two sticks and the spit must be as broad as the pike being tied on the spit) tie the pike on winding packthred about it, tye also along the side of the pike which is not defended by the spit and the laths, rosemary, and bays, baste the pike with butter and claret wine with some anchoves dissolved in it; when the pike is wasted or roasted,
take it off, rip up the belly, and take out the whole herbs quite away, boil up the gravy, dish the pike, put the wine to it, and some beaten butter.
[ To fry Pikes.]
Draw them, wash off the slime and the blood clean, wipe them dry with a clean cloth, flour them, and fry them in clarifi’d butter, being fried crisp and stiff, make sauce with beaten butter, slic’t lemon, nutmeg, and salt, beaten up thick with a little fried parsley.
Or with beaten butter, nutmeg, a little claret, salt, and slic’t orange.
Otherways, oyster-liquor, a little claret, beaten butter, slic’t orange, and nutmeg, rub the dish with a clove of garlick, give the sauce a warm, and garnish the fish with slic’t lemon or orange and barberries. Small pikes are best to fry.