To fricasey cod.
GET the sounds, blanch them, then make them very clean, and cut them into little pieces. If they be dried sounds, you must first boil them tender. Get some of the roes, blanch them and wash them clean, cut them into round pieces about an inch thick, with some of the livers, an equal quantity of each, to make a handsome dish, and a piece of cod about one pound in the middle. Put them into a stew-pan, season thorn with a little beaten mace, grated nutmeg and salt, a little bundle of sweet-herbs, an onion, and a quarter of a pint of fish-broth or boiling watery cover them close, and let them stew a few minutes: then put in half a pint of red wine, a few oysters with the liquor strained, a piece of butter rolled in flour; shake the pan round and let them stew softly till they are enough, take out the sweet-herbs and onion, and dish it up. Garnish with lemon. Or you may do them white thus; instead of red wine add white, and a quarter of a pint of cream.
To bake a cod’s head.
BUTTER the pan you intend to bake it in, make your head very clean, lay it in the pan, put in a bundle of sweet-herbs, an onion stuck with cloves, three or four blades of mace, half a large spoonful of black and white pepper, a nutmeg bruised, a quart of water, a little piece of lemon-peel, and a little piece of horse-raddish. Flour your head, grate a little nutmeg over it, stick pieces of butter all over it, and throw raspings all over that. Send it to the oven to bake; when it is enough, take it put of that dish, and lay it carefully into the dish you intend to serve it up in. Set the dish over boiling water, and cover it with a cover to keep it hot. In the mean time be quick, pour all the liquor out of the dish it was baked in into a sauce-pan, set it on the fire to boil three or four minutes, then strain it and put to it a gill of red wine, two spoonfuls of catchup, a pint of shrimps, half a pint of oysters, or muscles, liquor and all, but first strain it, a spoonful of mushroom-pickle, a quarter of a pound, of butter rolled in flour, stir it all together till it is thick and boils; then pour it into the dish, have ready some to toast cut three-corner-ways, and fried crisp. Stick pieces about the head and mouth, and lay the rest round the head. Garnish with lemon notched, scraped horse-raddish, and parsley crisped in a plate before the fire. Lay one slice of lemon on the head, and serve it up hot.
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