Scale the mullets, draw them, and scrape off the slime, wash & dry them with a clean cloth, flour them and fry them in the best sallet oyl you can get, fry them in a frying pan or in a preserving pan, but first before you put in the fish to fry, make the oyl very hot, fry them not too much, but crisp and stiff; being clear, white, and fine fryed, lay them by in an earthen pan or charger till they be all fry’d, lay them in a large flat bottom’d pan that they may lie by one another, and upon one another at length, and pack them close; then make pickle for them with as much wine vinegar as will cover them the breadth of a finger, boil in it a pipkin with salt, bay-leaves, sprigs or tops of rosemary, sweet marjoram, time, savory, and parsley, a quarter of a handful of each, and whole pepper; give these things a warm or two on the fire, pour it on the fish, and cover it close hot; then slice 3 or 4 lemons being par’d, save the peels, and put them to the fish, strow the slices of lemon over the fish with the peels, and keep them close covered for your use. If this fish were barrel’d up, it would keep as long as sturgeon, put half wine vinegar, and half white-wine, the liquor not boil’d, nor no herbs in the liquor, but fry’d bay-leaves, slic’t nutmegs, whole cloves, large mace, whole pepper, and slic’t ginger; pack the fishes close, and once a month turn the head of the vessel
downward; will keep half a year without barrelling.
Marinate these fishes following as the mullet; viz, Bace, Soals, Plaice, Flounders, Dabs, Pike, Carp, Bream, Pearch, Tench, Wivers, Trouts, Smelts, Gudgeons, Mackarel, Turbut, Holly-bur, Gurnet, Roachet, Conger, Oysters, Scollops, Cockles, Lobsters, Prawns, Crawfish, Muscles, Snails, Mushrooms, Welks, Frogs.
[ To marinate Bace, Mullet, Gurnet, or Rochet otherways.]
Take a gallon of vinegar, a quart of fair water, a good handful of bay-leaves, as much of rosemary, and a quarter of a pound of pepper beaten, put these together, and let them boil softly, season it with a little salt, then fry your fish in special good sallet oyl, being well clarifi’d, the fish being fryed put them in an earthen vessel or barrel, lay the bay-leaves, and rosemary between every layer of the fish, and pour the broth upon it, when it is cold close up the vessel; thus you may use it to serve hot or cold, and when you dish it to serve, garnish it with slic’t lemon, the peel and barberries.
[ To broil Mullet, Bace, or Bream.]
Take a mullet; draw it, and wash it clean, broil it with the scales on, or without scales, and lay it in a dish with some good sallet oyl, wine vinegar, salt, some sprigs of rosemary, time, and parsley, then heat the gridiron, and lay on the fish, broil it on a soft fire, on the embers, and baste it with the sauce it was steep’d in, being broiled serve it in a clean warm dish with the sauce it was steeped in, the herbs on it, and about the dish, cast on salt, and so serve it with slices of orange, lemon, or barberries.
Or broil it in butter and vinegar with herbs as above-said, and make sauce with beaten butter and vinegar.
Or beaten butter and juyce of lemon and orange.
Sometimes for change, with grape verjuyce, juyce of sorrel, beaten butter and the herbs.