Home › The Principles of Cookery › Whiting, Fillets Of
Whiting, Fillets Of
Empty and cleanse the fish, but do not skin them. Pass a knife from the tail to the head, and take off the flesh close to the bone. Divide the fillets into halves crosswise, trim them neatly, fold them in a soft cloth, and leave them for awhile that they may be perfectly dried. Season with pepper and salt, sprinkle a little oil and vinegar over them, dip them in beaten white of egg, flour them well, and fry in hot fat till they are crisp and lightly browned. Drain them, press them in white blotting-paper to free them from fat, place in a circle on a hot dish, and serve with melted butter, or with parsley, anchovy, shrimp, ravigote, piquant, or oyster sauce. The last-named sauce, if made very thick and white, may be served in the centre of the fillets. Time to fry the fillets, five minutes or more. Probable cost of whiting, 4d. to 8d. each. Sufficient, one small whiting for each person.
A straightforward fried fillet with a Victorian dressing-up of sauces. The hinge is dryness: the fish is cloth-dried before it is seasoned, and skipping that step gives you soggy coating and spitting fat.
- Which fishBritish whiting is Merlangius merlangus, a small, lean member of the cod family with soft, very white flesh. In American markets "whiting" usually means silver hake, which behaves much the same; small pollock, haddock or any lean white fillet will substitute.
- Do not skin themWhiting flesh is delicate and can break up in the pan, and the skin helps hold each fillet together, which may be why the instruction is explicit.
- FilletingTwo fillets per fish, cut from tail to head along the backbone, then each halved crosswise gives four pieces. A small whiting is one portion, so plan on four pieces per person.
- The oil and vinegarThis is a sprinkling rather than a soak; the recipe sets no standing time for it, and the "awhile" it allows is for drying the fillets in the cloth beforehand. Any mild vinegar or lemon juice works; acid left on delicate fish for long begins to cure it.
- Egg white, not whole eggBeaten white with flour gives a paler, more brittle crust than whole egg; the recipe nonetheless expects the fillets to colour, calling for them to be crisp and lightly browned. Beat the white only to loosen it, not to a foam.
- Frying temperatureThe book gives no temperature; "hot fat" in modern terms is roughly 350-375F (175-190C), deep enough to float the fillets. The recipe allows five minutes or more; thinner pieces may be done sooner, and the fish is ready when the coating is crisp and set.
- Blotting-paperUse paper towel or a rack over a tray. Nineteenth-century white blotting-paper was unsized and untreated; modern printed or coloured paper is not a substitute for anything you intend to eat.
- The saucesMelted butter here means the old English butter sauce, a flour-thickened butter-and-water emulsion rather than plain melted butter. Anchovy, shrimp and oyster sauces are all that base with a flavouring worked in; ravigote and piquant are vinegar-sharpened. Any one of them suits the fish.
- Cost noteFourpence to eightpence a fish places this as everyday food rather than a luxury, though cheaper sea fish such as herring were to be had.
Whiting was commonly recommended as an invalid and nursery fish in Victorian Britain, praised in cookery books and medical writing for being lean, mild and easily digested. Fried fillets in this style correspond to the restaurant filets de merlan frits, and setting a ring of fillets around a bowl of thick white sauce -- as the recipe itself suggests for the oyster sauce -- was a familiar nineteenth-century service pattern associated with French practice, putting the sauce in the centre rather than under the food. Whole whiting were also curled with the tail through the mouth and fried as merlan en colère; filleting gave boneless pieces, which may be why it was regarded as the more genteel treatment.