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Bloater Fritters, Curried
Fillet the fish; cut them into small pieces, season with pepper and curry powder. Dip each piece into batter, fry in hot fat until crisp, drain well on a cloth, dish up on a folded napkin, and garnish with fried parsley.
A late-Victorian savoury built on a fish few shops now stock. The whole method hinges on the bloater itself: it arrives already salted and smoked, so it needs no cooking so much as heating through inside its batter.
- What a bloater isA whole herring, lightly dry-salted and cold-smoked ungutted, so it keeps its round shape and a distinctly gamey flavour. A kipper (split, brined, smoked) is the nearest thing on sale now; use kipper fillets in place of the bloaters, or plain smoked herring fillets if you can find them.
- SaltBloaters and kippers are already seasoned. Add the curry powder and pepper but no salt, and taste a scrap of the fish first — if it is aggressively salty, soak the fillets in milk or cold water for 20 minutes and pat dry before battering.
- BonesHerring has fine pin bones along the fillet as well as the frame. Run a thumb down the flesh after filleting and pull them out; in fritter-sized pieces a missed bone is unpleasant.
- The batterNone is specified here. About 1 cup flour, a pinch of salt, one egg and enough beer or cold water to make thick cream works; it must cling to the fish rather than slide off, so blot the fillets dry first.
- Frying temperatureThe book says only 'hot fat'. For this kind of fritter, 350–375F is the usual modern working range. Below that the batter absorbs oil and never crisps; above it the coating browns before the fish inside has heated. Two to three minutes a batch is enough.
- Curry powderVictorian commercial curry powder was typically built on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek, and was often milder than a modern hot blend, though strengths varied. A modern hot Madras blend will overwhelm smoked herring — use a mild one, about a teaspoon per pound of fish, worked in with the pepper and left ten minutes before battering.
- Fried parsleyWhole sprigs, thoroughly dry, dropped into the same fat for a few seconds until they stop hissing and turn brittle bright green. Wet parsley will spit violently, so shake it out in a cloth first.
- Yield and servingTwo bloaters or four kipper fillets give enough fritters for four as a savoury or a light supper dish. The folded napkin is there to absorb oil on the way to the table; a rack over a warm plate does the same job. Lemon is the obvious accompaniment, though the original leaves it out.
Bloaters belong to the great English herring trade, and Great Yarmouth in particular, where the fish were salted only briefly and smoked whole so that they stayed plump — the name is generally traced to that swollen appearance. Because the gut was left in, the enzymes kept working and gave the bloater its characteristic slightly bitter, high flavour, but also a short life: it was a fish to eat within a day or two, unlike the harder-cured red herring. The curry powder is a mark of its period, when a tin of it was a standard British larder item.