The angler's vade mecum, or, A compendious, yet full, discourse of angling discovering the aptest methods and ways ... for the catching all manner of fresh-water fish ... : together with a brief discourse of fish ponds, and not only the easiest but most palatable ways of dressing all sorts of fish ... / by a lover of angling.

To dress Trouts the common way.

4. First with a Knife gently scrape all the

slime off them, then wash them in Salt and Water, then gut them, and wipe them very clean with a linnen cloth, then flower them with Wheat-flower, and fry them very well in Sweet-butter, until they be brown and crisp; then take them out of the frying-pan, and lay them on a pewter dish very well heated be∣fore then Fire; then pour off the Batter the Trouts were fryed in, into the Grease-pot, and not on the Fish; then fry good store of Parsly and young Sage in other Sweet-butter, until they be crisp, then take out the Herbs and lay them on the Fish; but put not any of the Butter, wherein the Herbs were fried, on the Fish. Then beat up some Sweet-butter, with three or four spoonfuls of boiling hot spring-water (an Anchovis being first there∣in dissolved, if you can easily have them) and pour it on the Fish, and serve it up, garnishing your dish with Straw-berry or other green leaves. * 1.1 This is the way to fry Trouts or Salmon, Smelts, under a Foot-long, or Gray∣lings, Roches, Dates, Breams, or Gudgeons, their Scales first scraped off, and you may thus fry small Eels, after they are flead, gutted, wiped clean and cut into pieces of four or five Inches long. You may also fry this way Pearches and small Pikes, &c.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Graylings, Pear∣ches, small Pikes or Jakes, Roch, Eel, Gudgeon to fry.