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

delicate and very easily digested, hence its great popularity with the sick. It has also the advantage of being obtainable all the year round in good condition. The skin of the back is sometimes dark, sometimes white, varying with the nature of the ground on which the fish feeds. Soles vary in size from quite little slips, called "tongues," to large fish weighing eight or nine pounds per pair. Those in roe are rather insipid in flavour, and are best for filleting. They vary in price, but are never a _cheap_ fish. Halibut is an excellent substitute for turbot, which it rather resembles in flavour, and is a comparatively cheap fish. It is abundant in spring and summertime, and always a favourite with Jewish people. Being a very large fish, it is rarely sold entire. The choice bits are the flackers over the fins and the pickings about the head. A fillet or "steak" is the most profitable portion for general eating. Cod is at its best about Christmas time. From the end of January to March it is less good and not abundant; in May again it is generally very fine. The best are those which are plump and round at the tail, the sides having a slightly ribbed appearance, with yellow spots on a clear skin. Large cod are not generally cooked whole, being so much thicker at the head than at the tail. The head and shoulders, usually sold apart, form a handsome dish. It is a very nourishing fish, valuable in many ways, and if its "adaptabilities" were more understood it would be more generally appreciated. The salmon has been called the "king of fresh-water fish," yet, as before remarked, it does not belong to this category. The river is its birthplace, it is true, but the sea is its pasture ground, where it returns periodically to renew its strength. It inhabits fresh and salt water alternately, spending its summer in the river and its winter in the sea. Just as the swallow returns again to the same roof which sheltered it, so the salmon returns