100 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [rART I. 



rather verjuice and butter, and with good store of salt 

 mixed with it. 



Being thus dressed, you will find him a much better dish 

 of meat than you, or most folk, even than anglers themselves 

 do imagine. For this dries up the fluid watery humour with 

 which all chubs do abound. 



But take this rule with you, that a chub newly taken 

 and newly dressed, is so much better than chub of a day's 

 keeping after he is dead, that I can compare him to 

 nothing so fitly as to cherries newly gathered from a tree, 

 and others that have been bruised and lain a day or two in 

 water. But the chub being thus used ; and dressed pre- 

 sently : and not washed after he is gutted for note, that 

 lying long in water, and washing the blood out of any fish 

 after they be gutted, abates much of their sweetness you 

 will find the chub (being dressed in the blood, and quickly) 

 to . be sucli meat as will recompense your labour, and 

 disabuse your opinion. 



Or you may dress the chavender or chub thus : 



"When you have scaled him, and cut off his tail and fins, 

 and washed him very clean ; then chine or slit him through 

 the middle, as a salt fish is usually cut ; then give him three 

 or four cuts or scotches on the back with your knife ; and 

 broil him on charcoal or wood coal, that is free from smoke. 

 And all the time he is broiling, baste him with the best 

 sweet butter, and good store of salt mixed with it. And to 

 this, add a little thyme cut exceedingly small, or bruised 

 into the butter. The cheven thus dressed hath the watery 

 taste taken away, for which so many except against him. 

 Thus was the cheven dressed that you now liked so well, 

 and commended so much. But note again, that if this 

 chub, that you eat of, had been kept till to-morrow, he had 

 not been worth a rush. And remember, that his throat 

 be washed very clean, I say very clean, and his body not 

 washed after he is gutted, as indeed no fish should be. 1 



1 Every cookery book, from Mrs. Glasse down to M. Soyer, gives 

 directions for dressing this and other insipid and bony fish, so as to make 

 them palatable. M. Soyer, in particular, is very circumstantial, and, to 

 some extent, novel. After all, we are inclined to exclaim, "La sauce 

 vaut mieux que le poisson." ED. 



