Pike
The pike, jack or luce is a dry fish, which is not to be enjoyed unless prepared in grand style, with many rites and gorgeous ceremonies. The following wise receipt is given by Izaak Walton in his Complete Angler: -"First open your pike at the gills, and, if need be, cut also a little slit towards the belly. Out of these take his guts, and keep his liver, which you are to shred very small with thyme, sweet-marjoram, and a little winter-savory ; Pike to these put some pickled oysters, and some anchovies, two or three-both these last whole, for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not; to these you must add also a pound of sweet butter, which you are to mix with the herbs that are shred, and let them all be well salted. If the pike be more than a yard long, then you may put into these herbs more than a pound, or if he be less, then less butter will suffice: these, being thus mixed, with a blade or two of mace, must be put into the pike's belly : and then his belly so sewed up as to keep all the butter in his belly if it be possible; if not, then as much as you possibly can. But take not off the scales. Then you are to thrust the spit through his mouth, out at his tail. And then take four, or five, or six split sticks, or very thin laths, and a convenient quantity of tape or filleting; these laths are to be tied round about the pike's body pikes from his head to his tail, and the tape tied somewhat thick, to prevent his breaking or falling off from the spit. Let him be roasted very leisurely, and often basted with claret wine, and anchovies and butter mixed together, and also with what moisture falls from him into the pan. When you have roasted him sufficiently, you are to hold under him, when you unwind or cut the tape, that ties him, such a dish as you propose to eat him out of, and let him fall into it with the sauce that is roasted in his belly, and by this means the pike will be kept unbroken and complete. Then, to the sauce which was within, and also that sauce in the pan, you are to add a fit quantity of the best butter, and to squeeze the juice of three or four oranges. Lastly, you may either put it into the pike, with the oysters, two cloves of garlic, and take it whole out when the pike is cut off the spit; or, to give the sauce a hogoo [haut goût], let the dish into which you let the pike fall be rubbed with it; the using or not using of this garlic is left to your discretion. This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers or very honest men; and I Pilchard trust you will prove both, and therefore I have trusted you with this secret."
One part of this receipt cannot now be permitted-the spit. We do not apply steel to fresh fish. The pike must be baked, and this too without neglecting the basting, which is an important point.
There are of course other ways of doing the pike. He may be cut in slices and fried, in which case he is to be eaten with Dutch sauce ; or he may be cut in fillets, and served in most of the ways in which one serves salmon, turbot, and soles. He has even been served in waterzootje; but this does him too much honour. He is not delicate enough. It is much better to go to the other extreme, and dress him in the Chambord style.
Ankham eel and Witham pike In all England is none like.