Perchance to eat

I have recently acquired a charming little book by Ambrose Heath called From Creel to Kitchen. Published in 1939, it offers recipes for 20 species of freshwater fish caught in our rivers and lakes, including barbel, chub, gudgeon, roach and tench, though not powan or the unappealingly named burbot. It had not occurred to me that there are apparently more species of fish in fresh water than in the sea, though I doubt whether many readers, or indeed the editor, would be impressed by my devoting a column to dace or rudd. But I do think perch deserves more than a mention in passing.

Izaak Walton, who was knowledgable on the subject of eating as well as catching fish, and who is much quoted in Heath’s book, wrote of the perch that the Germans considered it to be ‘so wholesome that physicians allow him to be eaten by wounded men, or by men in fevers, or by women in childbed’. Madame Prunier called it ‘a beautiful and excellent fish’, and others consider it, after salmon and trout, to be the most delicate of the river fish.

Heath suggests a number of recipes for perch: fried, grilled, baked with a hollandaise sauce, or stewed in stock and sherry, together with garlic, parsley, nutmeg and anchovy sauce. Jane Grigson, who also rates perch highly, has a regional Italian recipe. The perch fillets are marinated in olive oil and lemon juice, with chopped spring onions, then dipped in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and fried in butter and oil. Chopped sage and butter are poured over the fish at the last minute. From France comes a recipe which requires the whole fish, slit with a knife on each side, to be put in a casserole on a bed of sliced onion and celeriac cut into julienne strips.