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
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     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
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    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

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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
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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
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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 home, at that identical rocky point. A man from
La Porte, Indiana, whom he took out the week before, landed a
thirty-eight pound "muskie" in trolling through that same narrow
channel. In the forty years that the guide has lived in the place,
man and boy, he has never known the fishing to be as poor as it
is now.