TO COOK CARP 109 
but indifferently nourished. Brought straight into the kitchen, 
where too often the culinary art runs on a very low and 
unimaginative level, it is submitted to the treatment suitable 
only for the finest of salt-water fish, and the result is deplorable. 
It was otherwise in old times in this country, when carp were 
very highly prized and carefully treated. The monks of old 
knew far better how to treat the Creator’s gifts than to 
drag carp out of a miry pond and deliver them straightway 
upon the table, with all their impurities upon them, imparting 
a disgusting flavour of mud to the flesh. Having caught 
their fish, and knowing by the calendar exactly when they 
would be required for fast-days, they bestowed them in stews 
constantly replenished with pure water, and fed them up on 
boiled grain or other fattening material, calculated to sweeten 
and enrich the flesh. Treated in this way, it is easy to suppose 
that there was good foundation for the high esteem in which 
people of old used to hold this fish, and that the elaborate 
recipe given by Izaak Walton for the cooking thereof was 
not thrown away. 
“JT will tell you,” says he, ‘‘how to make this carp, that 
is sO curious to be caught, so curious a dish of meat as 
shall make him worth all your labour and patience. And 
though it is not without some trouble and charges, yet it 
will recompense both. Take a carp, alive if possible ; scour 
him and rub him clean with salt and water ; then open him ; 
and put him, with his blood and liver, which you must save 
when you open him, into a small pot or kettle. Then take 
sweet marjoram, thyme, and parsley—of each half a handful, a 
sprig of rosemary and another of savoury ; bind them into 
two or three small bundles and put them into your carp, 
with four or five whole onions, twenty pickled oysters, and 
three anchovies. Then pour upon your carp as much claret 
wine as will only cover him, and season your claret well with 
salt, cloves, and mace, and the rinds of oranges and lemons. 
That done, cover your pot and set it on a quick fire till it 
