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Smelts, Broiled or Grilled
Draw carefully and wipe a couple of large smelts, flour them well, and lay them on a gridiron over a gentle fire. When half done turn them carefully upon the other side. When they are done enough put them on a hot dish, sprinkle a little salt upon them, and serve immediately. A cut lemon or a little anchovy sauce may be sent to table with them, if preferred. Time, five or six minutes. Probable cost, about 2d. each. Sufficient for one person.
A one-person supper dish from the days when smelts came off the Thames by the basketful. The method is sound; only the equipment and the fish supply have changed.
- "Draw" the fishThis means gut them, through a small slit at the vent or by pulling the gills and viscera out together. Heads and tails stay on; smelts are served whole and the fine bones are eaten with the flesh.
- Gridiron equals grill or ridged panA gridiron sat over coals, so the heat came from below. Use a preheated ridged grill pan over medium heat, or a broiler about 4 inches from the element, turning once.
- "A gentle fire" is not low heat"A gentle fire" most likely means a steady fire without flaring flame rather than a slow cook. A surface hot enough to set the floured skin helps stop the fish sticking and tearing when turned.
- Oil the fish, not the grateThe original assumes a well-seasoned iron gridiron. Brush the floured smelts lightly with oil or clarified butter before they touch the metal; flour alone will glue them down on a modern pan.
- Five or six minutes is for large fishFive or six minutes suits sizeable fish; Osmerus eperlanus commonly runs to something like 6 to 8 inches. The smaller smelts usually sold frozen today may need only about 2 minutes a side, and are done the moment the flesh at the backbone turns opaque.
- What a smelt isThe true smelt of British cookery is Osmerus eperlanus, a small silver fish that smells distinctly of cucumber when fresh; that smell is the freshness test. North American rainbow smelt, sold frozen and cleaned, are the practical substitute.
- Anchovy sauceA Victorian standby: melted butter sauce sharpened with anchovy essence. A modern equivalent is butter warmed with mashed anchovy fillet and a squeeze of lemon. The recipe offers either, and lemon alone arguably suits a grilled fish better than a fried one.
- QuantityTwo large smelts is the single serving the recipe specifies. With the smaller fish sold today you will need several each — a few as a first course, more as a main, with brown bread and butter.
The smelt was well thought of at the Victorian table, and it is a fish of the tidal estuary rather than the open sea: the Thames, along with the Medway, the Ouse and the Conway, are among the rivers traditionally associated with the winter and early-spring runs, though the Thames fishery had been badly damaged by pollution well before the later nineteenth century. The recipe's price of about twopence each puts them above the herring but within reach of a modest household treating itself. Grilling with no more than a dusting of flour, rather than an egg-and-breadcrumb frying, lets the flavour of a delicate fish show. Estuarine pollution and heavy fishing thinned the runs in Britain over the following century, which is why most smelts sold today arrive frozen from colder waters.