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Perch, Fried, with Herbs
Take two moderate-sized perch. Wash, empty, and scale them carefully, wipe them dry, and lay them on a dish. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over them, and pour on them six table-spoonfuls of oil. Let them soak for half an hour, and turn them once during that time.
Drain them well, and cover them thickly with finely-grated bread-crumbs, seasoned with pepper and salt, and flavoured with a powdered clove, or a little grated nutmeg, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, and a pinch of powdered thyme. Fry them in boiling fat till the fish are brightly browned, serve on a hot dish, garnish with parsley, and send melted butter, parsley sauce, or piquant sauce to table in a tureen. Time to fry, ten minutes or more, according to size. Sufficient for two persons.
A whole small fish, oil-marinated and crumbed rather than battered. The only real difficulty is getting the crumb coat to stay on, and that is settled before the fish ever meets the fat.
- Dry the fish, then dry it againThe crumbs adhere to the oil film, not to water. After the half-hour soak, drain and blot the skin so only oil remains, then press the seasoned crumbs on firmly and let the coated fish rest ten minutes before frying so the coating sets.
- "Finely-grated bread-crumbs"This means dry crumbs grated from stale crustless bread, closer to modern fine dry breadcrumbs than to fresh panko. Fresh soft crumbs will steam and slide off.
- "A powdered clove"One whole clove, ground — perhaps an eighth of a teaspoon. Clove is assertive with freshwater fish; the nutmeg alternative is the gentler choice.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil at frying temperatures; the phrase describes fat hot enough to fry hard. A useful working range is 350-375°F. Below that the crumb soaks and greys, above it the coating darkens before the fish is done.
- TimingTen minutes suits a whole perch of moderate size; the recipe itself allows "ten minutes or more, according to size." Judge by the flesh parting cleanly from the backbone at the thickest point, around 145°F, rather than by the clock alone.
- Sourcing the fishWild perch is not widely sold at retail in many markets. Any small firm-fleshed panfish works the same way — bream, crappie, small sea bass, or tilapia. Perch have sharp dorsal spines and tenacious scales; scale under water, or ask for it done at the counter.
- "Melted butter"In this book melted butter is a sauce — butter thickened with a little flour and water into a light pouring sauce, not simply butter liquefied. Parsley sauce is the same with chopped parsley stirred through.
- YieldTwo whole perch serve two as a main course. If using fillets instead, allow about 6 oz per person and cut the frying time to three or four minutes a side.
Perch was a staple of European freshwater cookery long before it was a restaurant fish, and nineteenth-century British and French kitchens treated it as a plain, cheap catch to be crumbed and fried rather than dressed elaborately. The oil soak here reads as the French mariner step, and the crumb mixture — parsley, thyme, a scrape of clove or nutmeg — looks like the seasoned panure of the period, applied to everything from cutlets to cod. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, the later successor to the Dictionary of Cookery of the 1870s, ran a series of such short entries under each fish, and its instinct to name three possible sauces rather than one seems to reflect its purpose as a reference book, offering the household a choice rather than a single prescription.