Why do we talk of the perch or the tench, for example, as being "coarse" fish? According to a French magazine, the perch is "the partridge of the rivers". And this magazine devotes several pages to attractive photograph of these fish in the cooking and preparing. French anglers and shooters (the latter in particular) are a spirited lot - or stroppy, if you like - and they care little for what the European Parliament says about the length of the season and maybe, too, for the decisions of their own parliament. The French hunters, in short, make no bones about the fact that the main aim of going out with gun or rod is to bring home tasty food, which they like to see cooked in various ways. Take the perch, which at one time our old Inland Fisheries Trust used to net by the ton to clear the waters of them. It was not uncommon to see a huge pile of dead perch beside a lake which was to be stocked with trout - often rainbow trout. Later, it is said, they sold the perch to countries where it was appreciated as food. In this article we find half-a-dozen colour pictures of the process of scaling and preparing the fish, recommending various recipes, including, for the biggest, stuffing and baking. And the eggs, they write, are very tasty.
Now, you read in the bulletin of the fisheries boards of huge catches of tench. A big fish, a specimen fish of six pounds and 10 ounces was registered a week or two ago. To be recorded, photographed maybe, and returned to the water? Or stuffed? But how often have you seen tench on a hotel menu, or eaten one yourself? Too coarse? Our European friends see things differently. And this magazine, while admitting that, because of the tench's tendency to live in still or slow-running waters, it may carry a muddy taste, advises on how to deal with that. One book tells us that in northern Germany, in France and some other countries, it is a favourite delicacy and economically very important.
But here is a mystery. A learned friend sends a quotation from a book thought to be written about 1450, perhaps by Dame Juliana Berners, which alludes to the fact that the tench "heelith all manere of other fysshe that ben hurt yet they may come to him." Mrs Beeton, who deemed it "a delicious and wholesome food", quotes from lines of poetry, unattributed, which mention that wounded fish would go the tench, "which sweats a healing balsam from his sides", and rub against it. Y