Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon].

  • Timbs, John, 1801-1875.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/188 (page 42)
    Shad is much esteemed in Paris, where it is eaten broiled, and served with caper-sauce, or sorrel. Sturgeon is an excellent fish, if firm; but, when it is soft and flabby, do not attempt to make any tiling good of it; or it will become red, and have a bad flavour. The sturgeon is of very great importance in an economi- cal point of view, to the various nations under the Russian sway. Caviare is made from the roe; isinglass from the bladder; the flesh is eaten fresh, salted, or preserved with aromatics; and even the cord which pervades the spine, constitutes a Russian delicacy named veirga. Caviare is increasing in estimation in this country, if we may j udge by the increased importation of it. Caviare is an old English luxury ; for Charles II, when he laid the foundation-stone of the Royal Exchange, was regaled “ with a chine of beef, fowls, hams, dried tongues, anchovies, caviare, and wines.” Dried salt-fish should be soaked in water, then taken out for a time, and soaked again before it is dressed. This plan is much better than constant soaking; the fibres of the fish being loosened by alternate expansion and contraction, which occasions the fish to come off in Hakes. Fisli sauce should always be thick enough to adhere to the fish. It had better be too thick than too thin, for it can be thinned at table by adding some of the cruet sauces. Anchovies are closely imitated by the French merchants, by curing Sardinias in red brine, and packing them in wine casks. Sardinias are, however, flatter and larger than anchovies. When perfectly fresh, the former are accounted excellent fish; but, if kept for any time, they entirely lose their flavour and become quite insipid. In the genuine anchovy, the scales separate from the surface with so much ease, that it is a common notion that the anchovy is not possessed of this integument. In eating the fish, the head must be taken off, on account of its bitterness, a quality which has obtained for this species the name of each rasicalus, from a strange idea, that the gall- bladder is in the head.