Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/155

Rh brush with egg, and cover them with bread-crumbs. Fry of a light brown, and lay them on a sieve to drain.—Small eels are sometimes boiled, and served with dried sage and parsley strewed over.

Choose a large eel. Slit open the belly and take out the bone. Rub it well with a mixture of pepper, salt, parsley, sage, thyme, and lemon peel. Roll up, quite tight, and bind it with tape; then boil it gently, in salt, a little vinegar, and water to cover it, till tender. It will keep in the pickle it was boiled in.

They are not skinned, but well cleaned, and rubbed with salt. Take out the bone, wash and dry them in a cloth. Either cut in pieces, or roll them round and cook them whole. First (parboiled) dip the fish into a thick batter of eggs, chopped parsley, sage, eschalot, lemon peel, pepper and salt; then roll them in bread-crumbs or biscuit powder, dip again in batter, and again in the crumbs. Broil over a clear fire. Garnish with curled parsley or slices of lemon, and serve anchovy sauce, or butter flavoured with cucumber vinegar.

The fish being cleaned, put it into a stew-pan, with half champagne and half rhenish, or half moselle and half sherry, in all a tumbler full; season with pepper, salt, an onion with 3 cloves in it, and a very little parsley and thyme, also a crust of bread. When the fish is done, lift it out whilst you thicken the sauce; bruise the bread, but if that be not enough, add a little flour rubbed smooth, and a bit of butter, boil it up and pour over the trout in the dish. Garnish with sliced lemon and fried bread.

Rub the gridiron with chalk or mutton suet, and set it over a clear fire. Run a long thin skewer through the heads of the sprats, and lay them on the gridiron. They