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Herrings, Dutch, Fried
Wash the herrings, and soak them in milk for a couple of hours. Drain and dry them, cut off the fins, dip the fish in flour, egg and bread-crumb them, and fry them in hot fat. Send potatoes in any form to table with them. Time, seven or eight minutes to fry. Probable cost, 1d. or 1 1/2d. each. Sufficient, half a dozen for three persons.
A salt-fish recipe in disguise: "Dutch herrings" are cured, not fresh, and the milk soak is the step that makes the dish work.
- What "Dutch herrings" areIn Victorian usage the term generally meant salt-cured herring imported in barrels, usually a mild cure. The nearest modern equivalents are maatjes or schmaltz herring fillets, or any lightly salted whole herring from a Dutch, Polish or Scandinavian shop. Fresh herring would not call for a soak of this length.
- Judge the soak by tasteTwo hours suits a mild cure. Anything heavily salted needs longer and a change of liquid partway; break off a corner and taste it raw before you commit. Under-soaked herring turns unbearably salty once the moisture cooks out of it in the pan.
- Dry them properly"Drain and dry" is doing real work here. A wet fish sheds its egg-and-crumb coat in the fat. Press between paper or a clean cloth until the surface is matt before flouring.
- Frying fat and heatThe recipe says only "hot fat" and does not name the fat or a temperature. For a modern shallow fry in dripping or lard, something in the region of 350-375F answers. Too cool and the crumb absorbs fat; too hot and the coating colours before the fish is through.
- TimingSeven or eight minutes suits a whole fish, turned once; the recipe gives no size. Split or filleted herring needs three or four minutes a side, no more.
- BonesHerring has a fine, forked bone structure that no amount of frying softens. If you would rather not deal with it at table, have the fish split and boned flat (kipper-style) before breading.
- Yield and servingSix fish for three people, as stated, makes a substantial supper or breakfast. The potatoes are not optional decoration -- plain boiled or mashed potato is what balances the salt.
- The cost noteA penny or three-halfpence each is Victorian pricing and tells you this was cheap food, not a market guide.
Salted herring was one of the staple cheap proteins of nineteenth-century Britain, sold from barrels. The Dutch herring trade was built on gibbing -- gutting the fish at sea while leaving part of the gut in, so its enzymes work on the flesh during the salting -- a method generally traced in tradition to a medieval Zeeland fisherman, though the story is much older than any evidence for it. What the recipe records is the standard English domestic treatment of an imported cure: soak out the salt in milk, which softens the flesh and blunts the sharpness in a way plain water does not, then crumb and fry to give a cheap, strong-flavoured fish some body and a bit of ceremony. It is served with potatoes in "any form".