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Sprats, Fried
Clean the sprats, dry them well, draw them at the gills, dredge them with flour, and run a small skewer through the heads of about a dozen of them. Fry them on the skewer in plenty of hot fat, and when they are nicely browned lift them on a hot dish covered with blotting-paper, and put them before the fire till the fat has drained from them. Fold a hot plate in a warm napkin; lay this on a hot dish, draw the skewers from the sprats, place them upon it, and garnish the fish with parsley and lemon. Serve as hot as possible. Sometimes the sprats are dipped in egg and bread-crumbs before being fried. Time to fry, two to three minutes. Sufficient for one or two persons.
A straightforward deep-fry that depends almost entirely on dry fish and hot fat. Everything else is presentation.
- Dry the fish properlyThis is the hinge. Sprats hold surface water, and wet fish will not take flour or brown; they steam and the coating slides off. Pat them thoroughly on a cloth or paper and flour them only at the moment they go into the fat.
- "Draw them at the gills"An old trick for gutting a small round fish without slitting the belly: hook a finger or the point of a knife into the gill opening and pull the gut out through it, so the fish stays whole. Small sprats are often eaten ungutted, in which case this can be skipped.
- Fat temperature"Plenty of hot fat" means deep enough to float the fish and around 350-375F. Below that the two-to-three-minute frying time will not crisp them; above it the flour scorches before the flesh sets.
- The skewerThreading a dozen through the heads keeps the batch together so it goes in and comes out at once, which matters when the whole cooking time is under three minutes. A metal skewer, not wood, and slide the fish off while still hot or the coating tears.
- Blotting-paperKitchen paper or a rack over a tray. Standing them "before the fire" is only a way of keeping them hot while the fat drains; a low oven at around 250F does the same, though the shortest possible wait is better.
- The folded napkinVictorian service laid fried fish on a linen napkin to absorb residual grease at the table. It is optional and, with paper draining, largely redundant.
- YieldA dozen sprats is one skewer, and the text reckons that enough for one or two people. For a starter for two or three, allow roughly a pound of sprats, fried in several batches so the fat does not drop in temperature.
- Egg and crumbsThe alternative coating gives a heavier, more substantial crust and needs the longer end of the frying time. Plain flour is the more usual treatment for fish this small.
Sprats (Sprattus sprattus, a small relative of the herring) were among the cheapest fish in Victorian Britain, landed in enormous winter quantities on the east and south coasts and hawked through city streets by the bushel. Their price is why a book like Cassell's gives them a matter-of-fact entry with no ceremony: they were food for households counting pennies, sold so cheaply that they were also used as field manure and pig feed. The fussy service here, with the folded napkin, parsley and lemon, is the dictionary's habit of dressing a humble ingredient in the conventions of a proper table. Whole small fish fried hard and eaten heads and all remains the standard treatment across Europe, from Baltic smoked sprats to the Mediterranean fry of whitebait and anchovy.