Brook Trout
Wash and drain in a colander a few minutes, split nearly to the tail, flour nicely, salt, and put in pan, which should be hot but not burning; throw in a little salt to prevent sticking, and do not turn until brown enough for the table. Trout are nice fried with slices of salt pork.
A pan-fried whole trout, written for a cook who already knows her way around a skillet. Two details carry the dish: a genuinely hot pan and a single turn.
- The one turnThe instruction not to turn until the fish is brown is the hinge. Trout skin sticks and tears if moved early; leave it four to five minutes over medium-high heat until the crust releases on its own, then flip once for two or three minutes more.
- "Split nearly to the tail"The fish is cut open and laid flat rather than cooked round; the recipe does not say whether the cut runs along the belly or the back, and either was done. Cut along the belly and press the fish open, or ask the fishmonger to butterfly it.
- Salt in the panThis recipe throws a pinch of salt into the hot pan to stop the fish sticking. A well-seasoned cast iron or carbon steel pan does the same job; the salt is optional.
- The fat is assumedThe fat is unstated -- no fat is listed in the main instruction, and the salt pork appears only as a closing suggestion. If you use it, fry two or three thin slices until the fat renders and the pork is crisp, lift it out, and cook the trout in what remains.
- FlourPlain white flour, patted on and shaken off. A wet fish steams rather than browns, so the draining in the colander matters; blot the cavity dry as well.
- DonenessA trout of 8 to 10 inches is done when the flesh at the thickest point turns opaque and slips from the bone, roughly 6 to 8 minutes total. Overcooked trout goes dry and cottony very quickly.
- YieldOne pan-size trout per person, with the crisped salt pork laid alongside and lemon if you want it.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) came out of Ohio, and the recipe is terse: it assumes a small fish and offers no sauce. Brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis, is a char native to the cold streams of eastern North America, and its reputation in the period as the finest of the freshwater fishes made plain frying the respectful treatment. The pairing with salt pork is the older logic of the farm kitchen he standing supply of cooking fat and salt both, so the fish arrives seasoned and fried in one stroke. By the late nineteenth century wild brook trout populations near settled areas were already thinning under fishing pressure and warming, silted streams, which is part of why hatchery stocking programs expanded in the same decades.