Smažený kapr s kmínem

The story

A few days before Christmas, temporary tanks of live carp appear on the streets of Czech towns, and families pick out their fish and carry it home — often in an ordinary plastic bag — to keep in the bathtub until Christmas Eve. Many Czechs will tell foreigners with pride that without carp, there is no Christmas. The fish is killed and prepared only on Christmas Eve itself, usually breaded and fried — in this version seasoned with a little caraway — and served with potato salad, while the head and trimmings go into a separate fish soup eaten as a starter that same evening. Keeping a live carp at home for days makes many people uneasy now, and more and more families buy their fish ready-prepared from the store rather than keeping it in the tub — yet the tradition is still alive enough to turn up in the newspapers every December as a distinctly Czech cultural phenomenon. For Czech families in the diaspora, the story of the carp in the bathtub is often the first anecdote they tell guests about their Christmas.