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Fried Halibut
Select choice slices, wash and dry nicely, then remove the skin. Dip the slices of the fish in beaten egg, then in fine cracker dust (first salt and pepper well), have ready a pan half full of lard boiling hot, drop in the lard, and fry a pretty brown on both sides. Drain and serve hot.
A plain egg-and-crumb fry that works as well now as it did then, provided the fat is hot enough and the fish is not left in it too long.
- Cracker dustFinely rolled soda or water crackers, crushed to a coarse sand. Unsalted saltines pounded in a bag or pulsed in a processor are the closest modern match; panko browns faster and gives a rougher crust.
- Season the fish, not the crumbsThe parenthetical "first salt and pepper well" most likely refers to the halibut itself, before the egg, though its placement after the cracker dust leaves the point ambiguous.
- Fat and temperatureLard is the period fat and gives good flavour; refined peanut or vegetable oil behaves much the same way. The book never defines "boiling hot", but a workable modern equivalent is somewhere around 350-365F. Below that the coating soaks; much above it the crumbs darken before the centre sets.
- A pan half fullThe fish is browned on both sides and turned, so this reads as pan-frying rather than a fryer, though "half full" of a deep pan is considerably more fat than the inch or so a modern cook would use.
- Thickness and timingHalibut steaks or fillets around three-quarters of an inch take three to four minutes a side. Halibut is very lean and turns dry and cottony past 130-135F at the centre, so pull it early rather than late.
- Drying mattersThe instruction to wash and dry nicely is doing real work. Surface moisture makes the egg slide and the crumbs fall off in the fat.
- SkinRemoving the skin is optional with modern fillets. Left on, it crisps well but may curl, so score it in two or three places.
- YieldFigure six to eight ounces of fish per person; a pound and a half serves three. Fry in batches so the fat does not drop in temperature, and drain on a rack rather than paper to keep the crust from steaming.
Halibut was a workhorse of American East Coast fish cookery around 1900, sold in thick cross-cut steaks from very large fish and appearing in general household manuals alongside cod and haddock. Cracker crumbs rather than breadcrumbs are a distinctly American habit of the period: soda and water crackers were commonly kept on hand, they crushed to a finer and drier dust than stale bread, and they browned evenly in lard. The whole method, egg wash, crumb, hot fat, drain, is the standard nineteenth-century treatment for any firm white fish, and the book's terseness assumes a cook who had done it a hundred times and needed only to be told which fish.