Whiting, Fried
INGREDIENTS.- Egg and bread-crumbs, a little flour, hot lard, or clarified dripping. AVERAGE COST, 4d. to 6d. each.
Take off the skins, clean, and thoroughly wipe the fish free from all moisture, as this is most essential, in order that the egg and bread-crumbs may properly adhere. Fasten the tail in the mouth by means of a small WHITING. skewer, brush the fish over with egg, dredge with a little flour, and cover with breadcrumbs. Fry them in hot lard or clarified dripping of a nice colour, and serve them on a napkin, garnished with fried parsley.
Send them to table with shrimp sauce and plain melted butter.
WHITING AU GRATIN.
TIME.-About 6 minutes.
SEASONABLE all the year, but best from October to March.
Note. Large whitings may be filleted, rolled and served as fried filleted soles. Small fried whitings are frequently used for garnishing large boiled fish, such as turbot, cod, &c.
Whiting au Gratin, Baked Whiting. INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 to 6 persons.-4 whiting, butter, 1 tablespoonful of minced parsley, a few chopped mushrooms when obtainable; mepper, salt and grated nutmeg to taste, butter, 2 glasses of sherry or Madeira, bread-crumbs. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 3d.
Grease the bottom of a baking-dish with butter, and over it strew some minced parsley and mushrooms. Scale, empty and wash the whitings, and wipe them thoroughly dry, carefully preserving the livers. Lay them in the dish, sprinkle them with bread-crumbs and seasoning, adding a little grated nutmeg, and also a little more minced parsley and mushrooms. Place small pieces of butter over the whiting, moisten with the wine, and bake for 20 minutes in a hot oven. If there should be too much sauce, reduce it by boiling over a sharp fire for a few minutes, and pour under the fish. Serve with a cut lemon, and no other sauce.
TIME.-20 minutes.
SEASONABLE all the year, but best from October to March.
Two whiting dishes: one egg-and-crumbed and deep fried, one baked in wine with herbs and crumbs. Both depend on a very dry fish before anything else touches it.
- Dry the fish firstThe instruction to wipe the fish completely free of moisture is the hinge of the fried version. Damp skin sheds the egg wash and the crumb coat slides off in the fat. Pat dry, then leave uncovered on paper for ten minutes before coating.
- Tail in the mouthCurling a whole whiting and pinning its tail through the jaw with a small skewer or cocktail stick is the traditional presentation. Purely decorative, and easily skipped in favour of straight fish.
- Frying fatLard or clarified dripping was standard and both hold up well at 180C/350F. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works. The recipe allows about six minutes, which suits small whole whiting; larger fish will need longer.
- "A hot oven"For the baked version read this as 200-220C (400-425F). Twenty minutes at that heat is right for four whole whiting; check that the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone.
- The liversThe instruction to preserve the livers when emptying the fish is deliberate, and they were presumably returned to the dish. Modern fishmongers usually gut fully, so expect to bake without them.
- Two glasses of sherryA Victorian wine glass is usually reckoned at roughly 60-75 ml, so two glasses is somewhere around 120-150 ml. Dry sherry or Madeira both work; the recipe says to boil the liquid down only if there is too much of it, then pour it under the fish.
- Fried parsleyThe garnish is parsley sprigs dropped into the same hot fat for a few seconds, until they stop hissing and turn crisp and dark green. They burn quickly and must be lifted at once.
- YieldThe baked dish is given for four to six; four whiting is generous for four as a main course. The fried version is one to two fish per person depending on size.
Whiting was the cheap, everyday white fish of the British table -- soft-fleshed, mild, quick to cook, and recommended in nineteenth-century household manuals as light food for invalids and children. Its low price is visible in the costings here: fourpence to sixpence a fish, against 2s. 3d. for a dish given as serving four to six. The au gratin treatment, with butter, parsley, mushrooms, nutmeg and a wine moistening, is the French kitchen's method applied to a humble fish, and is typical of how Beeton's compilers offered a plain preparation and a dressed-up one side by side. The advice that whiting is best from October to March reflects the pre-refrigeration habit of following the fish's condition through the year: it spawns in spring and is at its firmest in the colder months.