The fish paradox: austerity, necessity, and the luxury of the sea

“ Humanity, morality, decency, might be forgotten, but codfish must still be had for the use of the faithful in Lent and on fast days. ”

“ Economy is studied, but the recollection of the cheery kitchen suggests that there is no griping hard endeavour to curtail the rations necessary to support health and strength. In fact, the boys are sufficiently fed, warmly clothed, and are encouraged both to work and play heartily. Breakfast consists of bread and coffee; dinner of meat and vegetables three days in the week, fish on one day (Wednesday) , pudding on Monday, soup on Friday, meat and cheese on Saturday; tea or coffee with bread and dripping, while on Sundays butter is an additional luxury both at breakfast and tea ”

“ More bread, more tea, more vegetables are eaten, and fruit is added. The usual breakfast is bread, butter, and tea; the dinner a small amount of meat, with potatoes and vegetables; the evening meal, fish or bacon, with potatoes, as well as the eternal bread, butter, and tea. All these four young people are steady and intelligent. They have enough to eat, but they are put to it for proper clothing already. The H.’s will have to move sooner than the W.’s if their family increases, as their room, though a pleasant one, is not above half the size of the other. ”

“ Roast chickens divested entirely of the skin, can always be substituted for boiled ones in a mayonnaise: they should all be separated into single joints with the exception of the wings. The quite inferior parts need not be used at all.
The same sauce rather highly flavoured with cayenne, and other condiments, and more or less, to the taste, with essence of anchovies or anchovy butter, and coloured with lobster-coral, will make an excellent fish-salad, with alternate slices of lobster,—cut obliquely to increase their size,—and of cold turbot or large soles. ”

“ Let no man fancy he knows how to dine
Till he has learnt how taste and taste combine.
'Tis not enough to sweep your fish away
From the dear stall, and chuckle as you pay,
Not knowing which want sauce, and which when broiled
Will tempt a guest whose appetite is spoiled.
The man who hates wild boars that eat like tame
Gets his from Umbria, genuine mast-fed game:
For the Laurentian beast, that makes its fat
Off sedge and reeds, is flavourless and flat.
The flesh of roes that feed upon the vine
Is not to be relied on when you dine. ”

“ Whence it is natural to conclude, that the pretence of keeping Lent only by a change of diet from flesh to fish, is but a mock fast, and an innovation utterly unknown to the ancients, whose Lent fast was a strict and rigorous abstinence from all food till the evening. ”

“ Salt fish must always be well soaked in plenty of cold water the whole of the night before it is required for the following day's dinner. The salt fish must be put on to boil in plenty of cold water, without any salt, and when thoroughly done, should be well-drained free from any water, and placed on a dish with plenty of well-boiled parsnips. Some sauce may be poured over the fish, which is to be made as [63] follows: viz.—Mix two ounces of butter with three ounces of flour, pepper and salt, a small glassful of vinegar, and a good half-pint of water. ”

“ The white meats—milk, butter, and cheese—though very dear, are reputed as good for inferior people, but the more wealthy feed upon the flesh of all sorts of cattle and all kinds of fish. The nobility (“whose cooks are for the most part musical-headed Frenchmen and strangers “) exceed in number of dishes and change of meat. Every day at dinner there is beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, conie, capon, pig, or as many of these as the season yielded, besides deer and wildfowl, and fish, and sundry delicacies “wherein the sweet hand of the seafaring Portingale is not wanting.” ”

“ For Archestratus, in his Gastronomy, tells us how every part of it should be treated, saying—
In Sicyon my friend you best can get
A mighty head of conger, fat, and strong,
And large; and also take his entrails whole,
Then boil him a long time, well-soak'd in brine.
And after this he goes through the whole country of Italy, saying where the congers are best, describing them like a regular writer of an Itinerary, and he says—
There too fine congers may be caught, and they
Are to all other fish as far superior
As a fat tunny is to coracini. ”

“ The combat between a man's taste and his exchequer is never less agreeable than when it concerns a dinner. To feel that you have a soul for turtle and truffles, and yet must descend to mashed potatoes and herrings; to know that a palate capable of appreciating a salmi des perdreaux must be condemned to the indignity of stock fish,—what an indignity is that! The whole man revolts at it! You feel, besides, that such a meal is unrelieved by those suggestive excursions of fancy which a well-served table abounds in. ”

“ They know the pleasures of eating, which is the satisfaction of the animal appetite; but the true, refined pleasures of the table date only from the time when Prometheus fired the soul with heavenly flame, from which sprang intellect, with a host of radiant followers in its train. A good dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the heart. ”

“ Few of them seem to have mastered the mystery of how to dine. “Man ist was man isst” says the German proverb, and there is no valid reason for spending fabulous sums on a dinner of out-of-the-season delicacies, when the good reasonable and seasonable things of this earth are ready and ripe for consumption.
At the same time, meanness has nothing [Pg 7] to recommend it. There is no credit in starving yourself or your guests. The difference between mere parsimony and economy has never been more deftly illustrated than in those pregnant sentences from Edmund Burke: “Mere parsimony is not economy. ”

“ How many seek for a dispensation in Lent, that they may be allowed to eat meat, lest fish should upset their stomachs and make them ill! And it is when health begins to fail that we know what a great treasure we possessed. ”

“ Know yee therefoor for the causes aforesaide and for the better strengthening & recovery of her health, I the saide James Lister do hereby give & grant libertie and licence to her the saide Alice Lister att her will and pleasure att all tymes, as well during the tyme of Lent, as upon other fasting daies and fish daies (exhibiting by the laws to eate flesh) to dresse and eate such kind of fleshe as shal be best agreing to her stomach & weake appetite. ”

“ The main articles of diet are indifferent bread and butter, the fag ends of coarse meat, the outside leaves of green vegetables, and tea, and an occasional pennyworth of fried fish and potatoes. Children who are supplied with milk at school, or who are given breakfast and dinner, respond at once to the better feeding, and show distinct improvement in their class work. ”

“ Thicken some boiling milk with flour, wet to a batter with cold milk, and stir the fish into it; season with pepper, butter, and salt. Put it into a pudding-dish, and spread cracker or bread crumbs thickly over the top to prevent the milk from scorching, and set into the oven to bake just long enough to brown nicely. A good way to use up cold fish, making a nice breakfast or a side-dish for dinner. ”

“ It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish—the blood-ends the cook had collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, and investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. It was another perfect day—soft, mild, and clear; and Harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs. ”

“ Lay the fish in a deep dish, pour over it about a teacupful of boiling vinegar, more or less, according to the quantity. Let the fish soak in this for an hour; then take it out, fold it in a nice clean piece of linen, place it in a stewpan with a piece of butter, an onion and a carrot thinly sliced, a bunch of parsley, a shallot, 2 bay leaves, a sprig of basil, spice, pepper, and salt to taste, 1 pint red wine (vin ordinaire) , and a little broth. Let all simmer gently till the fish is cooked enough; the weight of the fish must decide the time. ”

“ By keeping a few cans in the house, one is always ready in any emergency to produce a fine dish of salmon in a few minutes. It is particularly nice for a breakfast-dish, heated, seasoned with pepper and salt, placed on thin slices of buttered toast, with a cream dressing poured over all, i. e., milk thickened on the fire, by stirring it into a roux (see page 51) of butter and flour, and seasoned with pepper, salt, and a few pieces of fresh butter just before serving. For dinner it is excellent served with any of the fish sauces. ”

“ Cookery simulates the disguise of medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best for the body; and if the physician and the cook had to enter into a competition in which children were the judges, or men who had no more sense than children, as to which of them best understands the goodness or badness of food, the physician would be starved to death. A flattery I deem this to be and of an ignoble sort, 465Polus, for to you I am now addressing myself, because it aims at pleasure without any thought of the best. ”

“ A fish that swims which does not like man's flesh
If he can only chance to come across it.
There is a part of this fish which the Romans call thursio, and which is very delicious, and much sought for as an article of luxury.
86. There is also the pike. These, as Aristotle reports, are a solitary and carnivorous fish; and they have a bony tongue, adhering to the [Pg 488] mouth, and a triangular heart. But, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, he says that they bring forth their young, like the cestres and chrysophryes do, chiefly in those places where rivers fall into the sea ”

“ Shaftesbury reveals to us an illustration of George the First’s reign. “In latter days,” he says, “it has become the fashion to eat with less ceremony and method. Every one chooses to carve for himself. The learned manner of dissection is out of request; and a certain method of cookery has been introduced, by which the anatomical science of the table is entirely set aside. Ragoûts and fricassées are the reigning dishes, in which every thing is so dismembered, and thrown out of all order and form, that no part of the mess can properly be divided or distinguished from another.” ”

“ Those false and miserable palates, that judge of meats by the price and difficulty, not by the healthfulness of taste, they vomit that they may eat, and they eat that they may fetch it up again. They cross the seas for rarities, and when they have swallowed them, they will not so much as give them time to digest. Wheresoever Nature has placed men, she has provided them aliment: but we rather choose to irritate hunger by expense than to allay it at an easier rate. ”