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Herrings, Fresh, Fried
Clean and scale four fresh herrings. Cut off the fins, and either score the fish lightly in three or four places, or open them along the underside, and take out the bone. Season them with a little salt and pepper; flour, and afterwards brush them over with beaten egg, and sprinkle bread-crumbs over them. Fry them in a very little hot fat, and drain them well before serving. The roes should be taken out, egged and crumbed separately, fried, and sent to table with the fish. Stir a tea-spoonful of vinegar into half a pint of melted butter, and send this sauce in a tureen to table with the herrings. Time, three minutes each side. Probable cost of herrings, 4d. Sufficient for two persons.
A straightforward crumbed fry that still works exactly as written, with two points of translation: the sauce is not what its name suggests, and herring spoils faster than almost any fish you will buy.
- "Melted butter" is a sauceIn Victorian English this means a flour-thickened butter sauce: butter and flour cooked together, then let down with water or milk to half a pint and finished with more butter. Proportions vary from book to book. Half an imperial pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Simply pouring melted butter over the fried herring is not what is intended.
- Freshness is the hingeHerring is oily and enzyme-rich, and goes soft and rancid-tasting within a day or two. Buy fish with clear eyes, bright red gills and firm flesh, and cook it the day you buy it. Anything with a putty smell should be refused rather than seasoned harder.
- Boning along the undersideThe second option — opening the fish belly-side and lifting out the backbone — gives a flat kite-shaped fillet that cooks evenly and eats without picking. Score-and-fry-whole keeps more moisture but leaves the diner to deal with the pin bones, of which herring has many.
- "A very little hot fat"This is shallow frying, not deep. Two or three tablespoons of dripping, lard or oil in a heavy pan, hot enough that a crumb sizzles at once (roughly 350–375F); too cool and the crumb absorbs fat and slides off.
- TimingThree minutes a side suits a whole herring of 6–8 oz. A boned, opened fish is thinner and needs closer to two minutes a side. The roes are done in a minute or two — fry them last and they will still be hot when the fish reaches the table.
- The roesSoft (male) roes were especially prized, though hard roes were fried in the same way and the recipe does not specify which. Roes are now often sold separately rather than left in the fish; if your fishmonger has cleaned the herring, ask for roes on the side or leave them out — the recipe does not depend on them.
- YieldFour herrings for two people, as stated, which is generous by modern portioning. Two fish each with bread and the butter sauce makes a full main course; one each suits a first course or a breakfast dish.
Herring was the cheap protein of the British and northern European table for centuries — the "silver darlings" landed in enormous quantities on the east coast of Scotland and England and moved inland salted, smoked or, where the railways reached in time, fresh. Cassell's quotes the cost at fourpence for four fish: this is food a household of modest means could eat weekly. Egging and crumbing was a common Victorian treatment for oily fish fried in shallow fat, the coating giving both a crisp surface and a barrier against the fat. The vinegar stirred into the butter sauce does the same work as the more familiar mustard sauce served with herring in the same period, cutting the richness of a notably fatty fish.