Carpe piscem

Where are the pike, the char, the carp of yesteryear? Still in English lakes and rivers, but they are not to be found in the English kitchen. Pike, then called luce, are mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and they were on the menu at King Henry IV’s coronation banquet at the end of the 14th century; but today the cooking of them is left to the French. Char live in the Lake District: salted char was sent down to Hampton Court for King Henry VIII’s pleasure, and potted char was popular in the 18th century. It was good to see Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall cooking them on television the other day, on the shore of Coniston Water, but I wonder how many others have eaten the fish. As for carp, it was a favourite of Izaak Walton — ‘the queen of rivers: a stately, a good, and a very subtle fish’ — who provided a recipe for it which began, ‘Take a carp, alive if possible…’ Nowadays it is widely farmed, though not for the table in this country but to provide sport and trophies for anglers.