Page:Art of Cookery 1774 edition.djvu/205

 If it wants and salt you must put some in: then take the rest of the roe, and beat it up with the yolk of an egg, some nutmeg, and a little lemon-peel cut small, fry them in fresh butter in little cakes, and some pieces of bread cut three-corner-ways and fried brown. When the carp are enough take them up, pour your sauce over them, lay the cakes round the dish, with horse-radish scraped fine, and fried parsley. The rest lay on the carp, and the bread stick about them, and lay round them, then sliced lemon, notched, and laid round the dish, and two or three pieces on the carp. Send them to table hot.

The boiling of carp at all times is the best way, they eat fatter and finer. The stewing of them is in no addition to the sauce and only hardens the fish and spoils it. If you would have your sauce white, put in good fish-broth instead of beer, and white wine in the room of red wine. Make your broth with any sort of fresh fish you have, and season it as you do gravy.

FIRST scale and gut them, wash them clean, lay them in a cloth to dry, then flour them, and fry them of a fine light brown. Fry some toast cut three-corner-ways, and the roes; when your fish is done, lay them on a coarse cloth to drain. Let your sauce be butter and anchovy, with the juice of lemon. Lay your carp in the dish, the roes on each side, and garnish with the fried toast and lemon.

SCALE, wash, and clean a brace of carp very well; take an earthen pan deep enough to lie cleverly in, butter the pan a little, lay in your carp; season it with mace, cloves, nutmeg, and black and white pepper, a bundle of sweet herbs, an onion, and anchovy; pour in a bottle of white wine, cover it close, and let them bake an hour in a hot oven, if large; if small, a less time will do them. When they are enough, carefully take them up and lay them in a dish; set it over hot water to keep it hot, and cover it close, then pour all the liquor they were baked in into a saucepan; let it boil a minute or two, then strain it, and add half a pound of butter rolled in flour. Let it boil, keep stirring it, squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, and put in what salt you want; pour the sauce over the dish, lay the roes round, and garnish with lemon. Observe to skim all the fat off the liquor.