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WHITING, FILLETS OF (a la Tyrolienne)
Remove the fillets of five medium-sized whiting; season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, roll in flour, dip in egg beaten up with a table-spoonful of oil, roll in fresh bread-crumbs, smooth them with a knife. Dip the ends of each fillet in egg, thrust a small skewer through each to give them the shape of rings, fry in clear hot fat till of a light brown, drain them carefully, pile up on a folded napkin, put some fried parsley on top, garnish with quartered lemons, and serve with hot tomato sauce in which some butter has been melted.
A straightforward breaded fry; the only real trick is the ring shape, which depends entirely on the skewer holding and the crumb coat staying dry until it hits the fat.
- YieldFive medium whiting give ten fillets, enough for four as a starter or three as a main. Whiting are small, so figure two or three fillets per person.
- Buying the fishWhiting (Merlangius merlangus) is soft-fleshed and not always on the counter. Small haddock, pollock, hake or lemon sole fillets behave the same way; you want thin fillets, 3-5 oz each, that will bend without cracking.
- Forming the ringsLeave the fillets whole and curl each one round, bringing the ends together, then pin through both ends. The recipe calls for a small skewer; a wooden cocktail pick is easier to withdraw without tearing the crumb. The dab of egg on the ends is glue and should not be skipped.
- The egg washThe tablespoon of oil beaten into the egg thins it and helps the crumbs set into an even shell. Smoothing with a knife, as directed, presses the coating down so it does not lift and blister in the fat.
- Frying temperature"Clear hot fat" indicates fat hot enough to brown quickly without smoking, in modern terms roughly 350-360F. Fry two or three rings at a time, three to four minutes, until light brown; thin fillets are cooked through by the time the crust colours. Crowding drops the temperature and the coating goes greasy.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly, then drop into the same fat for 15-20 seconds only, off the heat if it is very hot. Wet parsley will spit violently and 30 seconds too long turns it black.
- Removing the picksPull the skewers once the rings are drained and set, not before; the fish will hold its shape once the crust is firm.
- The sauceA plain tomato sauce enriched with butter, as the recipe directs; whisking the butter in off the heat keeps it from splitting. Serve it separately and hot so the crust stays crisp.
À la tyrolienne is one of the shorthand garnish names of the nineteenth-century French repertoire, and in practice it signals tomato with fried onion rings; the Tyrol connection is nominal rather than culinary. Whiting was cheap and abundant in Victorian Britain and appears throughout Cassell's, usually fried, curled or made into forcemeat, precisely because its flesh is too delicate for hard handling. The ring shape here may perhaps be a version of the older trick of pinning a whiting's tail into its mouth to make merlan en colère, the "angry whiting" of French tables, though the connection is speculation rather than documented; slicing into fillets and skewering them into rings is the same idea adapted for a plate that could be served without bones. Piling fried food on a folded napkin was standard practice in this period, the linen doing the work of today's wire rack.