To Dress Pipers

A terse instruction of the kind that assumes you have already read the pike recipe a few pages earlier. The whole dish hinges on the stuffing and the pan juices; the fish itself wants only gentle handling.

• What a piper isThe piper is a gurnard (Trigla lyra and its relatives), a firm, lean, sweet-fleshed fish with a bony armoured head. Gurnard is sold again at good fishmongers; red mullet, John Dory or a small whole sea bass all behave similarly under the same treatment.
• Handle the fish carefullyGurnards carry sharp dorsal and gill-cover spines that can give a nasty jab. Snip them off with kitchen scissors before scaling and gutting, or have the fishmonger do it.
• "A pudding" means forcemeatNot a sweet pudding but a stuffing for the body cavity: breadcrumbs, chopped suet or butter, parsley, lemon zest, a little grated onion, salt, pepper and mace, bound with egg. "Well-seasoned" is the operative phrase, since the fish is mild.
• Baking temperature and timeThe book gives no oven heat, only "bake". In a modern oven a moderate heat, around 350F, works, covered loosely with foil or buttered paper. A 1 to 1 1/2 lb stuffed gurnard needs roughly 25 to 30 minutes; the flesh should just part from the backbone, and for safety the stuffing should reach 165F.
• Boiling as the alternativeIf boiling, keep the water at a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil, or the flesh will break up and the stuffing wash out. Wrapping the fish in muslin, a method used at the time, makes it possible to lift it out whole.
• "A large cup of rich broth"An indefinite measure; something on the order of a cupful, say 8 fl oz, of good fish or veal stock. It moistens the fish while it bakes and becomes the base of the sauce.
• Essence of anchovyA commercial anchovy extract of the period, salty and concentrated. Anchovy paste from a tube, or two or three mashed salted anchovy fillets, does the same job; start with a teaspoon and taste, as it can quickly overwhelm.
• Finishing the sauceThe original simply boils the pan liquor, anchovy and lemon up together, with no flour or thickening of any kind. If you want more body, reducing the liquor a little before adding the anchovy and lemon, or whisking in a knob of cold butter off the heat, is a modern liberty rather than anything the text asks for.
• YieldOne gurnard of about 1 1/2 lb, stuffed, serves two as a main course.