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Grayling, Fried
Scale and clean the fish, opening it as little as possible. Cut off the fins and gills, but leave the heads, and wipe them as dry as possible. Season with pepper and salt, dredge a little flour over them, and fry them in plenty of hot dripping, or lard, until lightly browned. Drain them from the fat, and send them to table with crisped parsley in the dish, and melted butter in a tureen. Time, according to the size, from six to ten minutes. Sufficient, one moderate-sized fish for two persons.
A plain shallow-fry of a whole freshwater fish, and the method still works exactly as written. Most of the adjustment is in sourcing and in the fat.
- The fish itselfGrayling is a game fish rather than a market fish, and in Britain and much of Europe it is subject to close seasons and local rules; it is rarely sold. Small rainbow or brown trout of 8-12 oz are the closest substitute in size, flesh and cooking time.
- Handle it freshGrayling is reputed to carry a faint thyme-like scent when freshly caught, said to fade within hours, and its flesh is generally reckoned to soften faster than trout. Cook it the day it is caught if at all possible.
- Dripping and lardBeef dripping or lard gives the browning the recipe expects. Clarified butter or a neutral oil with a knob of butter added late will do the same job; "plenty" here probably means enough fat to come part-way up the fish rather than a deep-fry.
- Dry, then flourThe instruction to wipe the fish as dry as possible is the hinge. Any surface moisture steams the flour coating loose and the skin will stick and tear. Flour only just before the fish goes into the pan.
- Heads on, gut minimallyOpening the fish as little as possible keeps it in one piece and keeps the juices in. A short slit behind the vent is enough to draw the innards; leave the head for shape and flavour.
- TimingSix to ten minutes total for a fish of this size, turned once, over a medium-high heat. Test at the thickest point behind the head: the flesh should part from the backbone cleanly.
- Crisped parsleyParsley fried in the same hot fat for a matter of seconds, until it stops hissing, then drained on paper. It burns almost immediately, so do it after the fish and off the direct heat.
- Melted butter in a tureenIn Victorian usage this is a butter sauce, not simply melted butter: butter worked with a little flour and water or fish stock into a light pouring sauce. Plain warm butter with lemon is the modern equivalent.
- YieldOne moderate fish per two people as the book has it suits a multi-course dinner. As a main course, allow one whole fish of 8-12 oz per person.
Grayling (Thymallus thymallus) takes its Latin name from the faint smell of thyme said to cling to a freshly caught fish, and it has long been treated in English angling literature as the trout's poor relation, praised for sport and eaten mainly by those who caught it. That may be why it appears in a general household dictionary of this sort: books of this kind aimed to cover everything that might arrive in a country kitchen, including river fish that never reached a fishmonger's slab. The treatment given here is a standard Victorian handling of a small whole freshwater fish — seasoned, floured, fried in dripping, sent up with fried parsley and a butter sauce. Fried parsley as a garnish was common in nineteenth-century fish cookery and largely disappeared in the twentieth.