American Cookery

page 7

and tails, and even painting the gills, or wetting with animal blood. Experience
and attention will dictate the choice of the best. Fresh gills, full bright
eyes, moist fins and tails, are denotements of their being fresh caught; if they
are soft, its certain they are stale, but if deceits are used, your smell must
approve or denounce them, and be your safest guide.

Of all fresh water fish, there are none that require, or so well afford haste in
cookery, as the Salmon Trout, they are best when caught under a fall or
cateract--from what philosophical circumstance is yet unsettled, yet true it is,
that at the foot of a fall the waters are much colder than at the head; Trout
choose those waters; if taken from them and hurried into dress, they are
genuinely good; and take rank in point of superiority of flavor, of most other
fish.

Perch and Roach, are noble pan fish, the deeper the water from whence taken, the
finer are their flavors; if taken from shallow water, with muddy bottoms. They
are impregnated therewith, and are unsavory.

Eels, though taken from muddy bottoms, are best to jump in the pan.

Most white or soft fish are best bloated, which is done by salting, peppering
and drying in the sun, and in a chimney; after 30 or 40 hours of drying, are
best broiled, and moistened with butter.

Poultry--how to choose.

Having before stated that the female in almost every instance, is preferable to
the male, and peculiarly so in the Peacock, which, tho' beautifully plumaged, is
tough, hard, stringy and untasted, and even indelicious--while the Pea Hen is
exactly otherwise, and the queen of all birds.

So also in a degree, Turkey.

Hen Turkey, is higher and richer flavor'd, easier fattened and plumper--they are
no odds in market.

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