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Skate, Fried, to Eat Cold
Put the skate into boiling water, and boil it for five minutes; take it up, drain and dry it, and dip it into egg and bread-crumbs. Fry it slowly in hot fat, let it get cold, and serve garnished with parsley. Send mustard, pepper, and vinegar to table with it.
A cold supper dish from the era when fried fish was as often eaten at room temperature as hot. The whole thing hinges on the fish being absolutely fresh, and on frying at a temperature that sets the crumb without leaving the coating greasy once it cools.
- Buy the wing, and smell itSkate is sold as skinned wings, commonly in the region of 8-12 oz each; allow roughly a wing for two as a cold dish. Skate holds urea in its flesh, which breaks down to ammonia as it ages, so anything with a whiff of cleaning fluid should be rejected outright. Skate is traditionally said to benefit from a day or two before cooking, but the smell should still be clean and marine.
- The five-minute boilChiefly a firming step: it sets the surface so the flesh does not shed its coating in the pan, and makes the wing easy to dry, though on a thin wing five minutes will take the flesh most of the way to done. Drain it well and blot it thoroughly on a cloth or paper before it meets the egg, or the crumbs will slide.
- Skin and cartilageIf the wing still has skin, scrape or pull it off after the boil, when it lifts easily. The ribs of cartilage running through the wing are eaten in some kitchens and left in others; either way the flesh strips off them in ribbons with a fork, which is part of what makes skate good cold.
- "Fry it slowly in hot fat"Not a contradiction in Victorian terms: hot enough to seize the crumb, not so hot that it colours before the fish heats through. A moderate frying heat, around 325-340F if you are measuring, and only as long as it takes to colour the crumb, since the wing has already had five minutes in the water. Fat much cooler than this soaks in and the coating turns leaden as it cools.
- Fat choice matters for cold eating"Hot fat" in a book of this date would most likely have meant beef dripping or lard, which set firm at room temperature and give a crisp, dry crust. A neutral oil with a high smoke point behaves similarly for the frying but the crumb stays a little softer once cold. Drain on a rack rather than paper so steam escapes from underneath.
- CoolingLet it cool uncovered at room temperature, then refrigerate if it is not being eaten within a couple of hours. Bring it back to cool room temperature before serving; straight from the fridge the flesh is firm and the flavour muted.
- The condiments are the sauceMustard, pepper and vinegar are doing the work of a dressing here. English mustard made up fresh, and a sharp malt or cider vinegar, cut the richness of the fried coating in the same way that skate hot is served with brown butter and capers.
- SourcingSeveral large skate species, including the common skate, are severely depleted and restricted in some fisheries. Buy from a fishmonger who can name the species; thornback ray is the usual and better-managed choice in European markets.
Skate was a cheap fish through most of the nineteenth century, sold in quantity in London and the northern ports and treated as everyday eating rather than as anything grand. Its keeping quality is unusual among fish: as the urea in the flesh of rays and sharks breaks down it produces ammonia, raising the pH and retarding ordinary spoilage bacteria, at the cost of the ammoniacal smell, which is why a book like Cassell's can offer a fried skate specifically intended to be eaten cold, garnished and set out with a cruet. That habit belongs to a household pattern the dictionary takes for granted, where a cooked dish was expected to reappear cold at the next meal or on the sideboard at a cold collation. The mustard-pepper-vinegar trio sent to table is the seasoning pattern this recipe happens to show for cold fried fish, and is the same seasoning logic that survives in the vinegar bottle on a fish-and-chip counter.