216 NOTES ON FISH AND FISHING. 



But of course the cooking has a great deal to do with 

 the edibility of a jack, as also his previous treatment and 

 preparation. I hold with the Thames fishermen that, 

 when cleaned, it is well to rub the backbone inside with 

 lemon or salt, and dry the fish in the sun and air for 

 some hours before cooking. I also hold with Mr. 

 Pennell, that jack, for table, should be cleaned as soon 

 as caught, and crimped, like cod, while muscular action 

 is still going on. I would strongly advise anglers who 

 intend eating of their spoil to crimp their fish. I fol- 

 lowed Mr. Pennell's advice years before he gave it, if 

 this is not an Hibernicism. After being thus treated, 

 I believe a jack eats best simply boiled with a little 

 salt in the water, or baked with ordinary veal stuffing 

 inside him. A modern angler of repute recommends 

 ''roasting with strips of bacon tied round the shoul- 

 ders, and basting to a fine brown colour/' while a 

 friend of mine insists that the way to cook a jack is to 

 " simmer him gently in a saucepan with butter." Mr. 

 Pennell gives a receipt for " filleted pike," which is to be 

 served with gravy ; but as the instructions involve the 

 use of no less than ten different ingredients, I do not 

 think he has contributed much to the art of cooking 

 jack. All the old and almost all the modern receipts for 

 cooking most fresh-water fish are so complicated that 

 not one cook out of twenty could be depended on for 

 carrying them out, even if they had the materials at 

 hand, and time to use them. Walton's recipe for trans- 

 forming a jack by cooking into "a dish of meat too 

 good for any but anglers, or very honest men," takes 

 up more than two pages in his first edition, and the old 

 methods enjoined in the Eoyal kitchens in the 14th and 



