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Mussels, Fried
Cleanse and boil in the usual way, but when bearded lay them out to drain on a soft cloth. Make a thick batter with their liquor, two eggs, an ounce of butter, and as much flour as will be required; season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and a little grated lemon-peel and minced parsley. Thicken this batter over a slow fire, pour it when quite smooth and thick into a basin, and with a fork dip each mussel into it, and when well covered place each one on a board to get cold and harden, when they should be rolled in fine bread-crumbs, and fried in boiling lard to a light brown. Serve, arranged high in the centre of a dish, with parsley as a garnish, or as a garnish for fried or boiled fish. Time, five or six minutes to fry.
A Victorian croquette-style treatment: cooked mussels are coated in a thick cooked batter, chilled until firm, then breaded and fried. The chilling step is what makes it work.
- "Boil in the usual way"Steam the mussels in a covered pan with a splash of water or wine over high heat, 3-5 minutes, just until the shells open. Discard any that stay shut, and any that were cracked or gaping and would not close before cooking.
- The batter is a panadaWhat is described is not a pouring batter but a thick, cooked paste — flour, butter, eggs and mussel liquor stirred over low heat until it leaves the side of the pan, in the manner of a croquette base. The recipe fixes only the butter (1 oz / 30 g) and the eggs (two); flour and liquor are left to the cook's judgement, and enough flour is needed to make a paste stiff enough to cling to each mussel and harden as it cools.
- Strain the liquorMussel liquor carries sand and shell grit. Pour it through a fine sieve or muslin and leave the last spoonful in the pan. It is also salty, so season the batter at the end rather than the start.
- BeardsThe "beard" is the byssus, the tough fibrous tuft the mussel uses to anchor itself. Pull it away after cooking, when it comes free easily.
- Chilling is the hingeEach coated mussel must go cold and firm before breadcrumbing — an hour in the refrigerator, or 20 minutes in the freezer. Warm or soft coating will slide off in the fat and the whole thing disintegrates.
- Frying fat and temperature"Boiling lard" means fat at frying heat — roughly 350-375F (175-190C); lard or any neutral high-smoke-point oil works. The five to six minutes given is generous for something already cooked — 2-3 minutes to a light brown is plenty, and longer only toughens the mussels inside.
- GarnishThe recipe does not say whether the parsley is fresh or fried. If fried, use whole sprigs, dried thoroughly, dropped into the same fat for a few seconds; wet parsley will spit violently.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. As a rough guide, 2 lb of mussels in the shell yields somewhere around 30-40 shelled mussels, enough for four as a savoury or first course, or as a garnish for a large fish.
Mussels were among the cheapest shellfish on the Victorian table, gathered from rocks, piers and estuary beds around the British coast and sold by the quart from barrows, and the recipe accordingly treats them as a garnish and a supper dish rather than a centrepiece. They also carried a reputation for disagreeing with people nineteenth-century cookery writing is full of instruction to remove the beard and the "purse", which was widely believed to be the seat of the trouble, though the real risks were poor storage and contaminated water. Frying them in a stiff cooked batter, then crumbing and browning them, recalls the method of the croquette and the huître frite in French practice, and served the useful purpose of making a very cheap ingredient look like something built by a cook.