To boil soals.
TAKE a pair of soals, make them clean, lay them in vinegar, salt and water, two hours; then dry them in a cloth; put them into a stew-pan, put to them a pint of white wine, a bundle of sweet herbs, an onion stuck with six cloves, some whole pepper, and a little salt; cover them, and let them boil. When they are enough, take them up, lay them in your dish, strain the liquor, and thicken it up with butter and flour. Pour the sauce over, and garnish with scraped horse-raddish and lemon. In this manner dress a little turbot. It is a genteel dish for supper. You may add prawns or shrimps, or muscles to the sauce.
To make a collar of fish in ragoo, to look like a breast of veal collared.
TAKE a large eel, skin it, wash it clean, and parboil it, pick off the flesh, and beat it in a mortar; season it with beaten mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt, a few sweet-herbs, parsley, and a little lemon-peel chopped small; beat all well together with an equal quantity of crumbs of bread; mix it well together, then take a turbot, soals, scate, or thornback, or any flat fish that will roll cleverly. Lay the flat fish on the dresser, take away all the bones and fins, and cover your fish with the farce; then roll it up as tight as you can, and open the skin of your eel, and bind the collar with it nicely, so that it may be flat top and bottom, to stand well in the dish; then butter and earthern dish, and set it in upright; flour it all over, and stick a piece of butter on the top and round the edges, so that it may run down on the fish; and let it be well baked, but take great care it is not broke. Let there be a quarter of a pint of water in the dish.
In the mean time take the water the eel was boiled in, and all the bones of the fish. Set them on to boil, season them with mace, cloves, black and white pepper, sweet-herbs, an onion. Cover it close; then strain it, add to it a few truffles and morels, a few mushrooms, two spoonfuls of catchup, a gill of red wine, a piece of butter as big as a large walnut rolled in flour. Stir all together, season with salt to your palate, save some of the farce you make of the eel and mix with the yolk of an egg, and roll them up in little balls with flour, and fry them of a light brown. When your fish is enough, lay it in your dish, skim all the fat off the pan, and pour the gravy to your sauce. Let it all boiltogether
