THE PERCH 59 
People are content to eat these creatures in an unseasonable 
condition, because they know that cod is a regular article of 
merchandise and food ; but of the perch which swarm in the 
neighbouring lakes, few have ever taken so much as a sample. 
Only a few cottagers use them when their boys spend a summer 
evening pulling these fine fish out with an ashen stick, a few 
yards of coarse twine, a cork, and a hook concealed in the 
carcase of an earthworm. Yet hath so shrewd a philosopher 
as Sir Thomas Browne, author of Religio Medici (1635), 
declared that perch taken in Breedon Broad, in Norfolk, 
where the salt water mingles with the fresh, “make a dish 
very dainty, and scarce to be bettered in England.” 
Whole chapters might be devoted to deploring the heart- 
less indifference our people show in the preparation of food 
for the table. Our neighbours across Dover Straits understand 
thoroughly how much the pleasure of living is enhanced by 
skilful cookery. I have eaten a kelt salmon at Amiens with 
relish, so wondrously had it been manipulated and revived by 
scientific treatment; and as for a certain fritdre of tench 
which I once had served to me in a humble wayside tavern 
at Meung-sur-Loire—voila des années—why, it lives as a land- 
mark in my gastronomic experience. Yet either kelt salmon 
or tench, served up with the appalling frankness with which 
the ordinary English “plain cook” deals with fish, were 
enough to daunt the finest appetite. Perch may be served 
Howto in many excellent fashions—grilled like a haddock, 
cook Perch. floating in souchet (I have qualms about the spelling), 
fried in fillets with egg and breadcrumbs, stuffed and baked, 
stewed en bécasse like a red mullet—but perhaps in no form is 
it better than when spatchcocked and broiled in butter, or the 
finest Lucca oil. The late Mr. Francis Francis, hardly inferior 
in critical gastronomy to skill in angling, used to pronounce 
the following to be the xe plus ultra of cooking a perch :— 
“First catch your fish—then kill it. Wipe it with a 
damp towel, and then, as it is, with inside intact, and head, 
