Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - 184 Perch Boyled

Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany (Beinecke MS 163)

This manuscript is dated about 1460.

The 200 (approx.) recipes in the Wagstaff miscellany are on pages 56r through 76v.

Images of the original manuscript are freely available on the Yale University Library website.

I have done my best to provide an accurate, but readable transcription. Common abbreviations have been expanded, the letters thorn and yogh have been replaced with their modern equivalents, and some minor punctuation has been added.

Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

-=-=-

184. Perch Boyled
Draw a perche at the gyll lett the bely be hole make a styfe sauce of watyr & salt & yf thu wilt thu may put to ale when hit boyleth scome hit clene & cast yn the perch & let hym boyle well then strip the skyn on both sydys & let the gedde be on and the tayle then ley hym on disches & strew on foyles of percelley serve forth cold & serve hym with venygger.

-=-=-

This recipe is a match for recipe 120 from A Noble Boke off Cookry.

To boylle a perche draw hym at the gills and let the belly be hole and mak a stiff sauce of water and salt and ale and when it boilithe cast in the perche and let it sethe and scrape of the skyne and lay it in a disshe and let the hed and the taile be on straw on padley and serue it with venyger.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

There is another version of the same recipe in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books.

Perche boiled. Take a perche, and drawe him in the throte, and make to him sauce of water and salt; And whan hit bigynneth to boile, skeme hit and caste the perche there-in, and seth him; and take him vppe, and pul him, and serue him forth colde, and cast vppon him foiles of parcelly. and the sauce is vinegre or vergeous.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]