262 COOKERY OF THE PIKE AND PERCH 



palates observed to be the best meat.' Gesner, by 

 the way, goes even further than commending the 

 pike as good eating. It seems that the heart and 

 galls held an honoured place in the mediaeval phar- 

 macopoeia; they were sovereign specifics for sundry 

 diseases 'as to stop blood, to abate fevers, to 

 cure agues, to oppose or expel the infection of the 

 plague, and to be many ways medicinable for the 

 good of mankind.' 



There are many allusions to the pike in the 

 Roman poets, but he does not seem to have been 

 held in high regard by Roman epicures. On the 

 contrary, we are told that he was relegated to smoky 

 suburban taverns, as the Portuguese peasants of the 

 present day delight in their smoke-dried baccalao 

 from the Newfoundland banks, which, if not very 

 savoury, is undoubtedly nutritious. There may have 

 been good reason for that, as pike swarmed in the 

 Tiber and other Italian rivers. For an Apicius or 

 Lucullus cared for nothing that was not costly, and 

 might have turned with contempt from a clean-run 

 salmon if it had been netted near his palace gates. 

 Whatever may have been the case under a Pagan 

 dispensation, the teaching of the Catholic Church, 

 with the festivals, fast days, and long Lenten seasons 

 brought all fishes into favour. And the pike, with the 



