A Handbook of Fish Cookery: How to buy, dress, cook, and eat fish

salt, half an ounce of pepper, a bunch of savoury herbs, a sliced onion and a carrot. Sometimes a small piece of salt bacon is also added. Let these all boil together for some time, then strain the liquor and keep in a stone jar. It will keep a long time if occasionally re-boiled. The fish should be well covered with the liquid when laid in the fish-kettle, and allowed to boil gradually. To fry fish successfully it should be literally _boiled_ in fat. This cannot be done over a slow or smoky fire, neither can it be done unless an abundance of fat be allowed. It is not an extravagant method, even if the pan be a large one, and it takes two or three pounds to fill it. If carefully poured into a basin containing boiling water after the fish has been cooked, the loose breadcrumbs and other particles will fall to the bottom, and the fat form a clear white crust. When due care is exercised there is no reason why the same fat should not be used fifty times over. Let it be quite boiling when the fish is put in. This may be known by its perfect stillness and the faint blue vapour which will rise from it. When the fish has been washed and carefully dried, flour it before dipping into beaten egg, and use brown raspings in preference to breadcrumbs. Lay a small piece of blotting-paper at the bottom of the dish to absorb all grease. Various recipes for _baking_ fish are given in the following pages. Perhaps one of the nicest ways of doing fish in the oven is _au gratin_. Briefly described, this consists of a layer of mixed herbs and breadcrumbs laid first at the bottom of a well-buttered dish, the fish laid on this, then the same ingredients with seasoning and more butter over it. Very often a glass of wine or vinegar is added. Anything cooked _au gratin_ must always come to table in the dish in which it was cooked, hence the gratin-dish, sometimes of silver, sometimes