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Frying Fish in Deep Fat
Small fish, or fillets of fish, may be fried in deep fat. If small fish are used, clean them, remove the fins, and gash the back bones. Dust the fish with salt and pepper, roll them in flour, dip in slightly beaten egg, diluted with a fourth cupful of milk or water, to each egg, and roll the fish in fine dry bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, or cornmeal. Lay in a frying basket and plunge into deep, hot Snowdrift, which will brown a bit of bread in a minute and a half. When golden brown, remove from the fat and drain on crumpled paper.
Fillets of fish should be treated in the same way. The fish may be accompanied with any of the sauces enumerated for Broiled or Boiled Fish.
A straightforward deep-fry method from a shortening manufacturer's booklet; the only real conversions needed are the fat itself and the bread-cube temperature test.
- SnowdriftA cottonseed-oil shortening sold in tins (later versions hydrogenated), used here as the frying fat. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works in its place — peanut, canola or refined sunflower — or a modern vegetable shortening if you want the same solid-at-room-temperature behavior.
- What the bread test meansFat that browns a cube of bread in a minute and a half is somewhere in the region of 350°F, though the test is rough. Use a thermometer; a minute and a half is a wide window in practice, and fish coated in crumbs wants the upper end of it so the crust sets before the interior overcooks.
- "Gash the back bones"Score the thick flesh along the spine on both sides of a whole small fish. This lets heat in at the densest point so the fish cooks through in the two to four minutes the crust needs.
- The three-step coatingFlour, then egg thinned with a quarter cup of milk or water per egg, then crumbs. Do not skip the flour: it gives the egg something to grip, and without it the crumbs slide off in the fat. Let the breaded fish sit five minutes before frying so the coating hydrates and adheres.
- TimingThe book gives no time because it relies on color. Small whole fish and fillets under an inch thick are done at 2–4 minutes, when the crust is deep gold and the flesh flakes at the thickest point (145°F). Fish held in the fat waiting to look browner will be dry.
- Basket capacityFry in small batches. A crowded basket drops the fat temperature sharply, and the coating absorbs oil instead of sealing. Let the fat recover to temperature between batches.
- Draining"Crumpled paper" is the period equivalent of paper towels; crumpling raises the fish off the flat surface so steam escapes and the underside stays crisp. A wire rack does the job better. Salt immediately out of the fat.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; figure roughly 6–8 oz of fish per person. The book cross-references its own sauces for Broiled or Boiled Fish; tartare is the natural modern match for fried fish.
A New Snowdrift Cook Book belongs to a genre that flourished in the first decades of the twentieth century: the manufacturer's cookbook, given away or sold cheaply to teach cooks how to use a new industrial product. Snowdrift was a hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening from the Southern cotton-oil industry, competing with lard and with Procter & Gamble's Crisco, and deep-frying was the argument that sold it \ hat could be strained and reused made frying cheaper and cleaner than it had been with butter or drippings. The bread-cube test in this recipe is the standard period substitute for a thermometer, and versions of it recur in American cookbooks of the era, though the timings vary ");