How to Cook Fish

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Title: How to Cook Fish
Author: Olive Green
Release Date: June 9, 2006 [EBook #18542]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
? START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO COOK FISH ***
Produced by Robert J. Hall, in loving memory of Florence?May Gautry (1905-2005)
HOW TO COOK FISH
BY OLIVE GREEN
[Page iii]?CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. THE CATCHING OF UNSHELLED FISH?II. FISH IN SEASON?III. ELEVEN COURT BOUILLONS?IV. ONE HUNDRED SIMPLE FISH SAUCES?V. TEN WAYS TO SERVE ANCHOVIES?VI. FORTY-FIVE WAYS TO COOK BASS?VII. EIGHT WAYS TO COOK BLACKFISH?VIII. TWENTY-SIX WAYS TO COOK BLUEFISH?IX. FIVE WAYS TO COOK BUTTERFISH?X. TWENTY-TWO WAYS TO COOK CARP?XI. SIX WAYS TO COOK CATFISH?XII. SIXTY-SEVEN WAYS TO COOK CODFISH?XIII. FORTY-FIVE WAYS TO COOK EELS?XIV. FIFTEEN WAYS TO COOK FINNAN HADDIE?[Page iv]
XV. THIRTY-TWO WAYS TO COOK FLOUNDER?XVI. TWENTY-SEVEN WAYS TO COOK FROG LEGS?XVII. TWENTY-TWO WAYS TO COOK HADDOCK?XVIII. EIGHTY WAYS TO COOK HALIBUT?XIX. TWENTY-FIVE WAYS TO COOK HERRING?XX. NINE WAYS TO COOK KINGFISH?XXI. SIXTY-FIVE WAYS TO COOK MACKEREL?XXII. FIVE WAYS TO COOK MULLET?XXIII. FIFTEEN WAYS TO COOK PERCH?XXIV. TEN WAYS TO COOK PICKEREL?XXV. TWENTY WAYS TO COOK PIKE?XXVI. TEN WAYS TO COOK POMPANO?XXVII. THIRTEEN WAYS TO COOK RED SNAPPER?XXVIII. ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY WAYS TO COOK SALMON?XXIX. FOURTEEN WAYS TO COOK SALMON-TROUT?[Page v]
XXX. TWENTY WAYS TO COOK SARDINES?XXXI. NINETY-FIVE WAYS TO COOK SHAD?XXXII. SIXTEEN WAYS TO COOK SHEEPSHEAD?XXXIII. NINE WAYS TO COOK SKATE?XXXIV. THIRTY-FIVE WAYS TO COOK SMELTS?XXXV. FIFTY-FIVE WAYS TO COOK SOLES?XXXVI. TWENTY-FIVE WAYS TO COOK STURGEON?XXXVII. FIFTY WAYS TO COOK TROUT?XXXVIII. FIFTEEN WAYS TO COOK TURBOT?XXXIX. FIVE WAYS TO COOK WEAKFISH
XL. FOUR WAYS TO COOK WHITEBAIT?XLI. TWENTY-FIVE WAYS TO COOK WHITEFISH?XLII. EIGHT WAYS TO COOK WHITING?XLIII. ONE HUNDRED MISCELLANEOUS RECIPES?XLIV. BACK TALK?XLV. ADDITIONAL RECIPES
INDEX
[Page 1]?HOW TO COOK FISH

THE CATCHING OF UNSHELLED FISH
"First catch your hare," the old cookery books used to say, and hence it is proper, in a treatise devoted entirely to the cooking of Unshelled Fish, to pay passing attention to the Catching, or what the Head of the House terms the Masculine Division of the Subject. As it is evident that the catching must, in every case precede the cooking--but not too far--the preface is the place to begin.
Shell-fish are, comparatively, slow of movement, without guile, pitifully trusting, and very easily caught. Observe the difference between the chunk of mutton and four feet of string with which one goes crabbing, and the complicated hooks, rods, flies, and reels devoted to the capture of unshelled fish.
An unshelled fish is lively and elusive past the power of words to portray, and in this, undoubtedly, lies its desirability. People will travel for two nights and a day to some spot?[Page 2]?where all unshelled fish has once been seen, taking $59.99 worth of fishing tackle, "marked down from $60.00 for to-day only," rent a canoe, hire a guide at more than human life is worth in courts of law, and work with dogged patience from gray dawn till sunset. And for what? For one small bass which could have been bought at any trustworthy market for sixty-five cents, or, possibly, some poor little kitten-fish-offspring of a catfish--whose mother's milk is not yet dry upon its lips.
Other fish who have just been weaned and are beginning to notice solid food will repeatedly take a hook too large to swallow, and be dragged into the boat, literally, by the skin of the teeth. Note the cheerful little sunfish, four inches long, which is caught first on one side of the boat and then on the other, by the patient fisherman angling off a rocky, weedy point for bass.
But, as Grover Cleveland said: "He is no true fisherman who is willing to fish only when fish are biting." The real angler will sit all day in a boat in a pouring rain, eagerly watching the point of the rod, which never for an instant swerves a half inch from the horizontal. The real angler will troll for miles with a hand line and a spinner, winding in the thirty-five dripping feet of [Page 3]?the lure every ten minutes, to remove a weed, or "to see if she's still a-spinnin'." Vainly he hopes for the muskellunge who has just gone somewhere else, but, by the same token, the sure-enough angler is ready to go out next morning, rain or shine, at sunrise.
It is a habit of Unshelled Fish to be in other places, or, possibly, at your place, but at another time. The guide can never understand what is wrong. Five days ago, he himself caught more bass than he could carry