To Choose Fish

The cook should be well acquainted with the signs of freshness and good condition in fish, as they are most unwholesome articles of food when stale, and many of them are also dangerous eating when they are out of season. The eyes should always be bright, the gills of a fine clear red, the body stiff, the flesh firm, yet elastic to the touch, and the smell not disagreeable. When all these marks are reversed, and the eyes are sunken, the gills very dark in hue, the fish itself flabby and of offensive odour, it is bad, and should be avoided. The chloride of soda, will, it is true, restore it to a tolerably eatable state,* if it be not very much over-kept, but it will never resemble in quality and wholesomeness fish which is fresh from the water.