Perchance to eat

I have recently acquired a charming little book by Ambrose Heath called From Creel to Kitchen. Published in 1939, it offers recipes for 20 species of freshwater fish caught in our rivers and lakes, including barbel, chub, gudgeon, roach and tench, though not powan or the unappealingly named burbot. It had not occurred to me that there are apparently more species of fish in fresh water than in the sea, though I doubt whether many readers, or indeed the editor, would be impressed by my devoting a column to dace or rudd. But I do think perch deserves more than a mention in passing.

Izaak Walton, who was knowledgable on the subject of eating as well as catching fish, and who is much quoted in Heath’s book, wrote of the perch that the Germans considered it to be ‘so wholesome that physicians allow him to be eaten by wounded men, or by men in fevers, or by women in childbed’.