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Haddock, Fried
Wash and scale the fish. Dry it well, cut off the head and tail, and divide it into three or four pieces. Take out the backbone, dip the slices in beaten egg, and afterwards strew bread-crumbs thickly over them. Fry them in boiling lard or dripping till they are brightly browned; drain, and serve on a hot dish. Garnish with parsley and sliced lemon, and send shrimp or anchovy sauce to table with the fish. Time, ten minutes to fry. Probable cost of haddocks, 9d. each and upwards. Sufficient, one moderate-sized fish for three or four persons.
A plain egg-and-crumb fry that still works exactly as written, provided the fat is properly hot and the fish is genuinely dry before it meets the egg.
- Dry the fish firstThis is the hinge. Damp haddock sheds its coating in the pan; blot the fillets on kitchen paper and let them sit uncovered a few minutes before egging. A light dusting of seasoned flour before the egg gives the crumbs something to grip.
- "Boiling lard or dripping"Fat does not boil — the phrase means fat hot enough to shimmer and bubble briskly around a crumb, around 350–375F. Below that the coating soaks; a thermometer or a test crumb settles it. Any neutral oil with a decent smoke point works as well as lard.
- Ten minutes is for thick cutletsThe recipe divides a whole haddock crosswise into three or four pieces, boned but still thick and skin-on, which need the full time. Modern skinless fillets are much thinner and are done in three to four minutes a side, at 145F internal or when the flesh flakes cleanly.
- Boning"Take out the backbone" means splitting each steak and lifting the bone free — a task easily avoided by buying fillets. If you do use steaks, run a finger along the cut face for pin bones and pull them with tweezers.
- The saucesShrimp sauce is a butter or bechamel-based sauce with small peeled brown shrimps; anchovy sauce is the same kind of base sharpened with anchovy essence or mashed fillets. Either can be made while the fish drains. A modern cook can substitute a browned butter with anchovy and lemon.
- Cost and yield9d. is a Victorian retail price and no guide to anything now. The recipe says one moderate-sized fish serves three or four; count on about 6 oz of fillet per person and buy the whole fish accordingly.
- DrainingDrain on a rack rather than directly on paper. Fried fish left flat on absorbent paper steams underneath and the crust softens within a minute or two.
Cassell's placed fried haddock among the everyday fish dishes of a period when rail transport had made sea fish cheap and reliable in inland British towns for the first time. Haddock was the workhorse of the North Sea trade, landed at Grimsby and Aberdeen in quantity, and its firm flakes suited the egg-and-crumb treatment that Victorian kitchens applied to almost everything fried. The shrimp and anchovy sauces are both English store-cupboard flavourings of long standing, anchovy essence in particular being a fixture of nineteenth-century larders. A great deal of British haddock went to the kiln as finnan haddie or Arbroath smokies, though the recipe itself says nothing of smoking.