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Trout, Filleted
Clean and dry the trout, and raise the flesh from the bones by passing a sharp knife close to the spine. Divide the flesh into neat pieces convenient for serving, dip these into beaten egg, and afterwards roll them in bread-crumbs, and fry them in hot fat till they are lightly browned. Drain on blotting-paper before the fire for five or six minutes, and then serve on a hot dish. Garnish the dish with shrimps, prawns, parsley, or lemon, and send shrimp sauce, anchovy sauce, tomato sauce, or tartar sauce to table in a tureen. Time to fry, about eight or ten minutes.
A straightforward egg-and-crumb fry. The only figure worth arguing with is the frying time.
- Frying timeEight to ten minutes is long for a trout fillet, which is rarely more than half an inch at the thickest point. In fat hot enough to brown a crumb briskly, 2-3 minutes a side is usually enough; the crumbs colour before the flesh dries out. The longer time may assume fat below proper frying heat, or thicker fillets from a large fish, but the recipe does not say.
- Fat temperature"Hot fat" is unspecified as to depth or kind; lard, clarified butter or a neutral oil all work, whether shallow or deep. Test with a crumb: it should sizzle briskly and colour in under a minute. Fat that is merely warm gives greasy, pale crumbs.
- Blotting-paperUse paper towels or a rack. Standing the fish before an open fire for five or six minutes was a way of keeping it hot while the fat drained; a low oven at 200F does the same job, though the crust softens either way, so serving straight away is better.
- FilletingRun the knife along the backbone from head to tail, then lift and pass the blade under the rib bones, which is what the original means by passing the knife close to the spine. Trout carry pin bones along the upper flank; feel for those before crumbing, since a fried fillet is awkward to pick over at the table.
- BreadcrumbsVictorian recipes mean fine dry crumbs from stale bread, not the coarse commercial kind and not panko. Sieve them if they are uneven. Flour the fish lightly before the egg and the coating will hold much better.
- The saucesMost of these suggestions are assertive against a mild fish. Tartar and lemon are the easiest. Anchovy sauce in this period generally means melted butter or a white sauce flavoured with anchovy essence rather than modern anchovy paste. Shrimp sauce means a butter sauce with small peeled brown shrimp stirred through.
- YieldAllow one trout per person as a first course or light main, two fillets each. The recipe scales without change beyond frying in batches so the fat does not cool.
Filleting is often said to have suited late-Victorian dining because of service a la russe, where portions were plated in the kitchen instead of a whole fish being carved at the table. The heavy garnish of shrimps or prawns and the list of four alternative sauces in a tureen belong to the same shift: the fish itself is plain, and the dressing is what distinguishes one appearance from the next. Trout were widely available from English and Scottish rivers, which is why a book aimed at middle-class households could treat them as an everyday fry rather than a luxury.