Home › A Cup of Fish › Fish and Chips
Fish and Chips
Slice fish in 1/4-inch pieces. Make a batter with 2 cups flour, 1/4 teaspoon baking powder, salt, pepper, 1 beaten egg, 1 teaspoon melted butter, and enough milk to make right consistency. Dip fish in batter, fry in deep fat. Serve with freshly fried potato chips.
Although this is an economical city dish to which the poor of Paris and London are necessarily devoted, it is even cheaper in a fishing shack where you catch your own, providing you have time to go in for making a kettle of deep fat.
A fish-fry reduced to its essentials, written for a camp kitchen rather than a fish shop. The two things that decide whether it works are fat temperature and batter thickness.
- Fat temperatureDeep fat should sit at 360-375F for fish this thin. Below about 340F the batter drinks oil and slides off; above 385F the crust colors before the fish sets. A thermometer is worth more here than any amount of judging by smoke.
- "Potato chips"The word may mean either the thin crisp or cut potatoes fried in the same fat; the title "Fish and Chips" points to the latter, but the recipe does not say. If cutting them thick, fry once at around 325F to cook through, then again at 375F to color, and fry them before the fish so the fat is not already carrying fish flavor.
- Batter consistency"Enough milk to make right consistency" means roughly the thickness of heavy cream, about 1 to 1 1/4 cups for 2 cups flour. It should coat a spoon and drip slowly; thin batter runs off, thick batter turns doughy in the center.
- The leaveningA quarter teaspoon of baking powder to two cups of flour gives almost no lift. A teaspoon or more produces a puffed, open crust, and a mixture of milk and beer or soda water lightens it further.
- Cut of fishQuarter-inch slices cook in about two to three minutes and suit lean white fish -- cod, haddock, pollock, perch, any firm freshwater panfish. Oily fish such as mackerel are less usual in a batter of this kind. Pat the pieces thoroughly dry or the batter will not cling.
- Salt and restingSalt the fish itself lightly before dipping; salt in the batter alone seasons only the crust. Salt the finished pieces again the moment they leave the fat, and drain on a rack rather than paper so the underside stays crisp.
- Quantity and yieldThis much batter coats about 2 lb of fish, enough for four people with potatoes. A camp kettle of fat needs at least 3 inches of depth and should never be more than half full, since a batch of wet fish makes it rise sharply.
Fried fish with fried potatoes became cheap urban food in Britain during the nineteenth century, when rail-carried sea fish met the industrial towns; fried fish sold by itself is older still, and is generally traced in London to Jewish immigrant cooks who fried fish in batter to be eaten cold. The pairing with potatoes is what made it a working-class staple, and the author's aside about "the poor of Paris and London" reflects a period habit of treating it as economy food rather than a national dish. What is unusual is the setting: an outdoor cookery book proposing that a fisherman with his own catch and a kettle of fat can produce the same meal for less, which is true enough as long as one is willing to haul the fat.