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HERRINGS, FRESH, FRIED (another way)
Take half a dozen herrings, scrape off the scales, cut off the heads and fins, cut the fish open down the back, and wipe with a soft cloth, but do not wash them. Slice two or three onions, and fry them for two or three minutes in hot fat. Dip the herrings in butter, and fry them with the onions, until done enough. Send to table with the onions in the dish with them, and parsley and butter in a tureen. Time, six or seven minutes. Probable cost, 1d. or 1 1/2d. each. Sufficient, half a dozen for three persons.
A straightforward pan-fry of split herring with onions, with two phrases that need decoding before you start.
- "Dip the herrings in butter"Possibly a compositor's slip for batter, or else a direction to brush them with melted butter before frying. Either flour them lightly or coat them in a thin batter; a coating helps keep the skin from sticking.
- "Parsley and butter"A standard Victorian sauce, not a garnish: melted butter thickened slightly with flour and finished with chopped parsley, served separately in a tureen. Modern equivalents are a parsley beurre blanc or simply warm butter with parsley and lemon.
- Splitting down the backCutting the fish open along the backbone and flattening it (kippering-style) is what makes the six-to-seven-minute timing work. Whole round herrings need longer; split ones cook through in about three minutes a side over medium-high heat.
- Do not wash themSound advice then and now. Wiping rather than rinsing keeps the flesh from taking up water, which would steam rather than fry. Pull the backbone out after splitting if you want them boneless.
- The onionsTwo or three minutes in hot fat leaves them barely coloured. If you want them soft and sweet rather than raw-edged, give them eight to ten minutes on their own and set them aside while the fish fries, then return them at the end.
- The fatThe recipe says only "hot fat", most likely dripping or lard. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works; butter alone will burn in the time needed.
- Cost and yield"1d. or 1/a half d. each" is one to one and a half old pence per fish. Six split herrings for three people remains a fair portion, though modern herring vary in size; allow two average fish per person.
Herring was the cheapest sea fish in Britain for most of the nineteenth century, landed in enormous quantities along the east coast and carried inland by rail, and Cassell's gives it several consecutive treatments rather than one. The price quoted here — a penny or so a fish — puts it well below almost any meat, and the pairing with fried onions and a plain melted-butter sauce is characteristic of the book's cheaper entries: strong-flavoured oily fish, something sharp or sweet alongside, and no expensive garnish. Splitting a herring down the back before cooking is the same preparation used for kippers, and the habit of wiping rather than washing fish is often met with in Victorian cookery writing, on the reasoning that water spoils both flavour and browning.