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Hake, Fillets of, Fried
Cut the fillets into convenient pieces for serving, dry them thoroughly, dip them into oiled butter, then egg and bread-crumb them, and fry them in boiling fat for five minutes. Arrange tastefully upon a hot dish, and garnish with picked shrimps and parsley.
A straightforward crumbed fish fry; the only real variables are the dryness of the fillets and the temperature of the fat.
- Oiled butterButter melted until it runs clear and oily; in practice this is close to clarified butter, and pouring off the milky sediment helps, since the solids catch and darken in the frying fat.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble furiously when the fish goes in, around 350–375F. Below that the crumb soaks; much above it and the coating colours before the fish is done.
- Five minutes is for thick piecesFive minutes -- The recipe gives no thickness; supermarket hake fillets are often quite thin. Judge by colour and by the flesh turning opaque and flaking - three to four minutes may be enough, and hake dries out quickly once past that point.
- Dry them thoroughlyThis is the hinge. Hake holds a lot of water and a damp surface makes the butter and egg slide off, so the crumb falls away in the pan. Pat dry, and salt the fillets a few minutes ahead if they have been frozen.
- Egg and bread-crumbBreadcrumbs in books of this kind were often dried and sieved from stale bread rather than fresh and soft. Panko is coarser but fries up crisp.
- Picked shrimpsSmall brown shrimps, peeled — sold cooked and peeled, or potted in butter. Any small cooked prawn stands in; scatter them over at the last moment so they do not go tough on the hot dish.
- YieldReckon on 5–6 oz of fillet per person, so about 1½ lb of hake for four.
Hake is often said to have been one of the cheapest sea fish in Britain and Ireland, plentiful enough that it was salted and sent to Spain, where it remains far more prized than it ever was at home. Cassell's places this among a long run of fillet-and-fry treatments that assume a household frying in deep fat as a matter of routine — an economical fish dressed up with a crumb coat, a garnish of shrimps and parsley, and the instruction to arrange it "tastefully," a reminder that presentation was part of the cook's job. The pairing of a plain white fish with shrimps points to the same logic as shrimp sauce, a standard Victorian accompaniment to boiled and fried fish alike.