2co PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



The best way to cut up, or as it used to be called ' splate ' ' 

 a pike, is to make a longitudinal cut down the back from head 

 to tail, when the meat can be readily turned back on each side 

 from the ribs (by far the best cut), without carrying with it 

 more than a small proportion of bones. These, especially the 

 small forked ones near the tail end of the fish, are exceedingly 

 troublesome, and, if any one of them happens to stick in the 

 throat, dangerous. Evidently our ancestors made ' no bones ' 

 of these little trifles ; as, according to Mr. Dickens, the follow- 

 ing was the first course of a Saturday's dinner in the time of 

 Henry VIII. : 'First, leich brayne. Item, frommity pottage. 

 Item, whole ling. Item, great jowls of salt sammon. Item, 

 great ruds. Item, great salt eels. Item, great salt sturgeon 

 jowls. Item, great pike. Item, great jowls of fresh samrnon. 

 Item, great turbots.' This was the first course of a fish dinner 

 enjoined by law as a fast for the 'good of their souls and 

 bodies.' 2 That they could manage a second course after it, was 

 a gastronomic feat not to be equalled in these degenerate days. 



Some of our monarchs, indeed, seem to have had an especial 

 affection for pike, as we find from Beckwith's enlarged edition 

 of ' Blount's Tenures,' ' that in one instance a certain stew or 

 fish-pond without the eastern gate of Stafford, was held by 

 Ralph de Warmer of our Sovereign Lord the King, on condi- 

 tion that when he pleased to fish therein "he should have ail 

 the pikes and the breams," the other fish coining to the hooks, 

 including eels, belonging to Ralph and his heirs for ever.' 



Many fishermen, including Stoddart, consider that a pike 

 is much better eating, especially for boiling, after it has been 

 'crimped 5 a process which, however, cannot be conveniently 

 applied to specimens of less than 4 or 5 Ibs. weight. ' Crimp- 

 ing,' says Sir Humphrey Uavy, ' by preserving the irritability of 

 the fibre from being gradually exhausted, seems to preserve it 

 so hard and crisp that it breaks under the teeth, and a fresh fish 

 not crimped is generally tough.' 



Immediately ajter having killed the fish by a sufficient number 



1 Best's Art of Angling. * Household Words, vol. iii. 



