Modern cookery for private families

or four slices of carrot, and a little salt, and stew the carp as gently as possible for nearly an hour. Have ready some good brown gravy, mixed with a couple of glassesful of port wine; add a squeeze of lemon-juice, dish the carp very carefully, pour the sauce over, and serve it immediately. We would recommend the Genevese Sauce, of Chapter V., as superior to any other for this dish. This receipt is for a fish which averages from five to six pounds in weight, but the carp sometimes attains to a very large size; and sufficient time to cook it perfectly should always be allowed for it. TO BOIL PERCH.[50] Footnote 50: The figure of this fish is very disproportioned in size to that of the carp and other kinds inserted here, as it is _quite small_ at its fullest growth compared with the carp, which sometimes attains to a great weight. [Illustration: Perch. ] First wipe or wash off the slime, then scrape off the scales, which adhere rather tenaciously to this fish; empty and clean the insides perfectly, take out the gills, cut off the fins, and lay the perch into equal parts of cold and of boiling water, salted as for mackerel: from eight to ten minutes will boil them unless they are very large. Dish them on a napkin, garnish them with curled parsley, and serve melted butter with them, or _Maître d’Hôtel Sauce Maigre_. Very good French cooks put them at once into boiling water and keep them over a brisk fire for about fifteen minutes. They dress them also without taking off the scales or fins until they are ready to serve, when they strip the whole of the skin off carefully, and stick the red fins into the middle of the backs; the fish are then covered with the Steward’s sauce, thickened with eggs. In warm water, 8 to 10 minutes; in boiling, 12 to 15 minutes. TO FRY PERCH OR TENCH. Scale, and clean them perfectly; dry them well, flour and fry them in boiling lard. Serve plenty of crisped