1 98 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



bably, indeed, as in other matters of eating and drinking, there 

 is a good deal of fashion mixed up with the likes and dislikes 

 of 'pike-meat,' which appear to have prevailed at different 

 periods. 



We have already quoted the couplet of Ausonius, in which 

 the ancient gourmand condemns him to ' smoke mic'st the 

 smoky tavern's coarsest food,' and brands him as a fish which 

 no gentleman would offer to his friend an opinion shared 

 apparently by a more modern poet, who, in his 'Bell of the 

 Shannon,' after stating that 



There is not her like, 

 adds 



All other lasses 

 She just surpasses 

 As wine molasses, 

 Or salmon pike. 



Vaniere, however, in his 'Proedium Rusticum,' exactly re- 

 verses the dictum : 



Lo ! the rich pike, to entertain your i;ucst, 

 Smokes on the board, and decks a royal feast. . . . 



An assertion which is perfectly in consonance with the farts of 

 the case as it pointedly figures in the Cartes de diner of most 

 of the grand and royal banquets of former times as, for in- 

 stance, the feast at the enthronisation of George Nevil, Arch- 

 bishop of York, in 1466 ; the feast given to Richard II. by the 

 celebrated William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester in 1394. 



' As for the Teviot pike,' says Stoddart, 'I consider them 

 at all times preferable to the general run of salmon captured 

 in that stream.' 



Even with the worst of pike, however, something may be 

 done by good cookery, and, per contra, bad cookery will spoil 

 even the celebrated Staffordshire jack, 'golden-bellied and 

 black-spotted,' and, according to authorities, the very ' king of 

 pikes.' I can honestly recommend the following receipt for 

 filleting pike, given me by Mrs. Robertson, the landlady of the 



