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Whitebait, Cooked
Take the whitebait out of the water with the fingers, drain them, and throw them into a cloth upon which flour has been strewn. Shake them in the cloth to make the flour adhere to them, then toss them in a large wide sieve to free them from the superfluous meal. If the fish stick together, separate them, but they will not do this if they are fresh. Have ready plenty of boiling beef-fat (this is much better than lard, which is usually recommended), put the whitebait a few at a time into a wire basket, plunge them in the boiling fat, and leave them for a minute or two. At the end of that time shake the fish to keep them from sticking together, and when they are slightly crisp without being browned they are done enough. Drain them from the fat while they are still in the basket, sprinkle a little salt upon them, pile them on a napkin, garnish with parsley, and serve very hot. Send quarters of lemon and brown bread and butter to table with them. Time to fry the whitebait, a few minutes.
A late-Victorian treatment of a fish that is cooked whole, eaten whole, and ruined by hesitation. Everything depends on dry fish, very hot fat and short batches.
- The hinge: fat temperatureThe instruction "slightly crisp without being browned" calls for fat that is already very hot; the book gives no figure, and modern practice for whitebait runs somewhere around 350-375F. Too cool and the flour turns pasty and the fish weep; much hotter and they colour before the flesh sets.
- Time"A minute or two" is the book's figure, and for fish of an inch or two the shorter end of it will often do. Take one out and test rather than trusting the clock.
- Beef fatThe recipe's preference for beef dripping over lard is sound — it has a higher smoke point and a savoury flavour. Clarified beef dripping, or any neutral oil good to 400F, does the job; unclarified dripping with meat solids in it will burn and speck the fish.
- Drying and flouringThe floured cloth is a dredging bag. A bowl of flour and a coarse sieve does the same, but the fish must be very cold and surface-dry first or the coating claggs. Chilling them briefly in the freezer before flouring helps them stay separate.
- Batches"A few at a time" is the whole method. A large handful drops the fat temperature and the fish steam together into a raft; a single layer in the basket, lifted the moment they stiffen.
- What whitebait is nowIn Britain the name still means the fry of herring and sprat, sold frozen and already gutted-free — nothing needs cleaning. In New Zealand and Australia whitebait means juvenile galaxiids, which are seasonally regulated and priced accordingly; check local rules before buying wild-caught.
- YieldThe book gives none. Reckon 4-5 oz per person as a first course, 6-8 oz as a main with bread and butter.
- ServingThe napkin absorbs fat and keeps the pile hot; a rack over a warm plate does it better. Cayenne shaken over the salt gives the once-standard "devilled whitebait", served alongside the plain.
Whitebait was a Thames fish before it was a dish. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the fry ran thick in the tidal river below London, and taverns at Greenwich and Blackwall built a summer trade on frying them within hours of the net — freshness being the one quality no cook could fake, since stale whitebait stick together in the flour, exactly as this recipe notes. The annual Ministerial Whitebait Dinner, at which members of the government ate their way through the season's catch at Greenwich, is generally traced to the early 1800s and survived into the later Victorian decades, which is why a fish barely three inches long turns up in serious cookery books at all. Cassell's fussiness about beef fat over lard belongs to the same world of frying-house expertise. Thames whitebait itself dwindled as the river fouled, and the fish on sale today comes chiefly from the sea.