This recipe is for fresh, and only fresh, pasta. All herbs used must be fresh as well or this dish is hardly worth making. It is so very simple, you can’t cheat.

Either cod or flounder are good local choices for the fish mousse — almost any firm, fresh white fish will do. Naturally one would not choose expensive striped bass; that would be like making hamburgers out of ground filet mignon.

When the first gas ranges were introduced in France about the middle of the 19th century, they were greatly distrusted. Meat baked in an oven was despised by Alexandre Dumas, who decreed that all food in his household be prepared on wood or charcoal fires. Grill cooks (rotisseurs) feared to lose their livelihood.

"Garlic's taste is briefest pleasure—
Eat in haste, repent at leisure.
Garlic's like the poor, like sorrow—
Here today and here tomorrow."
-Justin Richardson, from an anthology by William Cole, "...And Be Merry"