Carp

“The Carp is the queen of rivers,” said Izaak Walton; “a stately, a good, and a very subtle fish; that was not at first bred, nor hath been long in England, but is now naturalized.” In fact, the carp is an Asiatic fish that only reached Europe, along with its cousin the goldfish, in the Middle Ages. Because of the great size it can attain - nearly five feet in some cases - carp are credited with extreme longevity, and hopeful visitors to Fontainebleau imagine that they are feeding the self-same fish that took bread from the hand of Marie Antoinette. But a carp twenty years old is at its finest in flavour, and we would do well to copy the French, who esteem this fish as a great delicacy of the table and not just an ornamental addition to a garden pool.