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 friture of tench 

 which I once had served to me in a humble wayside tavern 

 at Meung-sur-Loire voila des annees 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 

 How to 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 becasse 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 ne '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, 



