CHAP. VIII.] THE FOUKTH DAT. 205 



then as much of it as you possibly can : but take not off the 

 scales. Then you are to thrust the spit through his mouth, 

 out at his tail ; and then take four, or five, or six, split 

 sticks or very thin laths, and a convenient quantity of tape 

 or filleting; these laths are to be tied round about the 

 pike's body from, his head to his tail, and the tape tied 

 somewhat thick to prevent his breaking or falling off from 

 the spit. 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. When you have roasted him sufficiently, you are 

 to hold under him, when you unwind or cut the tape that 

 ties him, such a dish as you purpose to eat him out of; and 

 let him fall into it with the sauce that is roasted in his 

 belly ; and by this means the pike will be kept unbroken 

 and complete. Then, to the sauce which was within, and 

 also that sauce in the pan, you are to add a fit quantity of 

 the best butter, and to squeeze the juice of three or four 

 oranges : lastly, you may either put into the pike with the 

 oysters, two cloves of garlick, and take it whole out, when 

 the pike is cut off the spit ; or to give the sauce a haut- 

 gout, let the dish into which you let the pike fall, be rubbed 

 with it : the using or not using of this garlick is left to your 

 discretion. M. B. 



This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very 

 honest men ; and I trust, you will prove both, and therefore 

 I have trusted you with this secret. 



Let me next tell you, that Gesner tells us there are no 

 pikes in Spain, and that the largest are in the lake 

 Thrasymene in Italy ; and the next, if not equal to them, 

 are the pikes of England ; and that in England, Lincoln- 

 shire boasteth to have the biggest. 1 Just so doth Sussex 



1 It has been a common notion that the pike was not extant in 

 England till the reign of Henry VIII. ; but it occurs very frequently 

 in the "Forme of Cury," compiled about 1390 by the Master-cooks of 

 King Richard II. The old name was Luce, or Lucy. An ancient MS., 

 formerly in the possession of John Topham, Esq., written about 1250, 

 mentions " Lupos aquaticos sive Lucios," amongst the fish which the fish- 

 mongers were to have in their shops. Three of them were the arms of the 

 Lucy family, so early as the reign of Edward I. 



Compare Pennant's "Zoology," vol. iii. p. 280, 4to ; Chaucer v., Luce, 

 Leland's Collect, vol. vi. pp. 1, 5, 6. That the pike was here in 



