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TENCH, FRIED (another way)
After having scaled and emptied the tench, split the back of the fish, but take care not to touch the belly, for if you do it will divide. Let it pickle for three hours in vinegar, salt, pepper, stalks of parsley, and onions. Then drain it, and dip it into flour. Fry of a fine colour and quite firm. The dripping must be very hot. This you try with a drop of water, which, being thrown into the dripping, occasions a noise if it is in a proper state. Send the fish up to table on a cloth with fried parsley all round; if you have a soft roe, fry it likewise, and serve it in the middle.
A straightforward shallow-fry of a whole freshwater fish, with a short acid cure standing in for what we would now call a marinade. Two things in the original need translating: the fat and the way its temperature is judged.
- Ignore the water-drop testFlicking water into hot fat makes it spit violently and can carry burning fat out of the pan. Use a thermometer and take the fat to 350-360F, or test with a cube of bread, which should brown in about 40 seconds.
- DrippingBeef dripping was in common use as a frying fat in this period, and suits the dish. Any fat with a high smoke point works, but avoid butter alone, which will burn before the fish is firm.
- The three-hour pickleThis is a short cure in vinegar with salt, pepper, parsley stalks and onion. Three hours is at the long end for a fish this delicate; two is ample for a small tench (the recipe gives no weight), and the flesh should be patted thoroughly dry before flouring or it will steam rather than fry.
- "Split the back"The fish is cut open along the back rather than the belly, so it opens out and cooks evenly while the belly stays intact and holds its shape. A modern fishmonger will do this if asked for the fish to be split dorsally rather than through the belly.
- TenchA carp-family fish rarely sold commercially in Britain or the United States today; most that are eaten are caught by anglers. It has a reputation for muddiness, which is exactly what the vinegar cure addresses. Perch, bream or a small carp behave similarly.
- ScalingTench scales are small and deeply embedded in a heavy layer of slime. A brief dip in boiling water loosens both and makes scaling far easier than scraping a dry fish.
- Soft roeThe milt of the male fish. Flour and fry it briefly, a minute or two a side, until just set; it turns grainy if pushed further.
- Sending it up on a clothA folded linen napkin on the dish, to absorb fat and keep the fish crisp underneath. A rack or paper does the same job.
- Fried parsleyCurly parsley, very dry, dropped into the hot fat for a few seconds until it stiffens and darkens to bright green. Wet parsley will spit; drain it well first.
- YieldOne tench of moderate size serves two as a main course.
Tench was a fixture of English freshwater fish cookery for centuries, valued less for its flavour than for its availability: it thrives in the still, muddy ponds that manor houses and monasteries kept stocked for fast days, and it survives out of water longer than most fish, which mattered before refrigeration. Izaak Walton wrote admiringly of it in The Compleat Angler, and folklore long held it to be a physician among fishes whose slime healed other species — a claim behind its old name, the doctor fish. The vinegar cure here is doing real work against the earthy, muddy note that pond-raised fish carry, a taste often attributed to compounds produced by algae and bacteria in the water. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the late nineteenth century, sea fish brought inland by rail had largely displaced pond fish from British tables, and entries like this one read as a survival from an older way of eating.