Name: Carp with Cherries
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Russian
Ingredients: 2 bottles beer (ale—not lager); juice of 1 lemon; 15 marinated cherries; 5-6 allspice berries; 1 bunch of celery chopped; 1-2 tablespoons butter; 4 ounces raisins (about ½ cup); 1 tablespoon flour; zest of 1 lemon; 5-6 sugar lumps; 2 tablespoons vinegar; crust from 1 loaf of bread; 2 onions, chopped; lemon slices from 1 lemon; 1 Hamburg parsley root (or bunch of flat-leaf parsley); ¼ cup red wine; 1 leek, chopped; 4-pound carp; 2-3 bay leaves; 2-3 cloves; 3-4 black peppercorns

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Game Cookbook

By Clarissa Dickson Wright and Johnny Scott

Published 2004

About

This delicious recipe comes from Elana Molokhovet’s A Gift for Young Housewives, a massive work in four volumes destined for the rising Russian middle-class, a sort of Mrs. Beeton for Russia; it sank without trace in the Revolution of 1917. The original recipe suggests keeping the carp’s blood mixed with vinegar and adding it to the sauce at the roux stage. Get the fish vendor to clean and gut the carp for you.