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One Egg (Tablespoonful of Salad Oil)
One tablespoonful of Salad Oil.
Breadcrumbs. Skin and fillet the whitings, and season the fillets with pepper and salt and lemon juice; roll them in flour, beat up the egg with the salad oil and dip the fillets into it, roll them in fresh breadcrumbs and smooth them over with a knife. Dip the end of each fillet in egg, and skewer them in the shape of rings; fry them nicely in boiling fat, drain them, then serve them piled up on a folded napkin with fried parsley on the top; garnish with quartered lemons, and serve with a good tomato sauce.
The heading is the tail end of an ingredient list — whitings, one egg, a tablespoonful of oil, breadcrumbs — printed in the terse style of Victorian cookery school notes. What follows is a straightforward crumbed and fried fish, but the shaping is where it goes wrong or right.
- QuantitiesThe original names no number of fish. One egg with a tablespoon of oil will coat about six to eight whiting fillets, which serves three or four. Buy 4 whole whiting (roughly 2 lb) for eight fillets.
- WhitingThe British whiting of this book is a small member of the cod family, usually sold whole. Any thin, flexible white fillet works: hake, small haddock, pollock, or the North American silver hake also sold as whiting. Skinless fillets suit the shaping here — skin contracts in hot fat and can pull the ring open.
- The hinge: skewering the ringsCurl each fillet skin-side in, overlap the ends, dab them with egg, and pin through with a cocktail stick or short metal skewer. Chill the shaped rings 20 minutes before frying so the coating sets; unchilled they unroll the moment they hit the fat. Remove the skewers after draining, not before.
- Boiling fatDeep fat at 350-360F. Fry in small batches for 2 to 3 minutes until pale gold — thin whiting fillets are cooked through by the time the crumbs colour, and longer gives a dry, cottony interior.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly and drop them into the fat for 10 to 15 seconds after the fish; wet parsley spits violently. They should stay green, not brown.
- Breadcrumbs"Fresh breadcrumbs" here means crumbs from a stale-but-soft loaf, grated fine — not dried golden crumbs and not panko, which will not sit smooth under the knife. Smoothing the coated fillet with a knife blade compacts it so it does not shed in the fat.
- The napkinFried fish was conventionally sent to table on a folded linen napkin, which also took up surface fat. A rack and a warm platter do the same job and let the coating stay crisp.
Filleted whiting curled into rings and fried is related to the nineteenth-century professional dish merlans en colère, in which the whole fish has its tail pushed into its mouth — "in anger". Whiting was cheap, abundant in British waters, and thought light and digestible, which is why it turns up constantly in Victorian sickroom cookery as well as in showpiece garnished entrées like this one. The technique is the lesson: a shaped, egg-and-crumbed fry that arrives at table as an architectural pile with fried parsley on top suits the formal dinner service of the period, where a fish course was expected to look built rather than plated.