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Haddock Fritters
Remove the skin and bones from a cold cooked haddock, and put the picked pieces in a bowl. To half a pound of fish add one ounce of butter, two ounces of bread-crumbs, and a teaspoonful of curry powder. Season with pepper, salt, grated nutmeg, and chopped lemon-rind. Moisten with a well-beaten egg and a little plain white sauce. Mix all together, and shape into neat pieces, dip in beaten egg, roll in bread-crumbs and grated cheese, put into a frying-basket and fry in boiling fat to a golden colour. Dish up garnished with fried parsley.
A leftovers dish built on cold cooked haddock, closer to a croquette than a batter fritter. The success of it rests almost entirely on how stiff the mixture is before you shape it.
- QuantitiesHalf a pound of picked fish is about 225 g, roughly what comes off a single large fillet once skin and bone are gone. The recipe gives no yield; at this scale expect a small dish — a light main for two, or a savoury course for about four.
- "Boiling fat"This means fat hot enough to fry, not liquid at a boil. Aim for 350-375F; a crumb dropped in should sizzle and brown in under a minute. Below that the coating soaks and the fritters collapse.
- The hinge: a stiff, cold mixtureBind with only as much beaten egg and white sauce as the crumbs will absorb — a spoonful or two of sauce at most. Chill the shaped pieces for half an hour before coating, or they will burst in the fat.
- Plain white sauceAn unflavoured béchamel: equal butter and flour cooked briefly, then milk whisked in and simmered until thick enough to coat a spoon. It should be very thick here, not pourable.
- Curry powderVictorian and Edwardian curry powder was generally mild and leaned on turmeric and coriander. A modern hot madras blend at a full teaspoon will dominate; start with half. Note that the mixture is bound with raw beaten egg, so taste it only after cooking a test piece.
- Lemon-rind"Chopped lemon-rind" means the zest only, pared thin and finely chopped — the white pith turns bitter. A grater does the job faster than a knife.
- Cheese in the coatingUnspecified, but a dry hard cheese is intended; Parmesan behaves best because it browns rather than melting and sliding off. Mix it no more than half and half with the crumbs or it scorches.
- Fried parsleyWhole dry sprigs dropped into the same fat for a few seconds until they stop hissing and turn brilliant green. Wet parsley will spit violently, so dry it thoroughly first.
Fritters of this kind were the standard answer to the remains of a boiled fish, belonging among the reheating and réchauffé methods that any late-Victorian kitchen needed daily in the absence of reliable cold storage. Haddock was the workhorse of the British fish trade — cheap, abundant from the North Sea grounds, and firm enough to flake into pieces that hold their shape. The curry powder and nutmeg are a signature of the period: Anglo-Indian seasonings are generally said to have become thoroughly domesticated by the end of the nineteenth century and were reached for routinely to lift plain leftovers, a habit visible across the fish, mince and rissole entries of nearly every household dictionary of the era.