270 COOKERY OF THE PIKE AND PERCH 



antithesis to ' Lord,' but then ' culpans ' was a 

 synonym for slices. 



Walton gives a simple but choice recipe, for he 

 says the dish is too good for any but anglers or 

 very honest men. As pike meat is decidedly dry, we 

 should not ourselves advise roasting, but our fathers 

 had some peculiar notions of cookery, Pepys always 

 boiled his haunches of venison. Says Izaak : ' First 

 open your pike at the gills, and if need be cut also a 

 little slit towards the belly ; out of these take his 

 guts and keep his liver, which you are to shred 

 very small with thyme, sweet marjory, and a little 

 winter-savory; to these put some pickled oysters 

 and some anchovies, two or three, both these last 

 whole, for the anchovies will melt and the oysters 

 should not ; to these you must add also a pound of 

 sweet butter, which you are to mix with the herbs 

 that are shred, and let them all be well salted ; if the 

 pike may be more than a yard long, then you may 

 put into these herbs more than a pound . . . : then 

 his belly is to be sewed up, so as to keep all the butter 

 in his belly : ... let him be roasted very leisurely, 

 and often basted with claret wine and anchovies and 

 butter mixed together, and also with what moisture 

 falls from him into the pan/ 



Then having disengaged him from the framework 



