Fried Stuffed Smelts

A one-line cross-reference recipe of the kind Fannie Farmer used constantly: it assumes you have already read the entry for Baked Stuffed Smelts a few pages earlier. Here is what it leaves unsaid.

• The stuffingThe referenced baked version calls for a soft bread-crumb stuffing of the usual sort, seasoned and moistened with butter. A scant teaspoon per fish is plenty; market smelts are small, and overfilling tends to split them in the fat.
• Boning and stuffingThe usual method is to slit the belly, remove the viscera and lift out the backbone from the head end, leaving the fish whole and hinged. You may have to do this yourself. Wooden toothpicks hold the cavity closed and can be pulled out after frying.
• "Crumbs, egg, and crumbs"This order recurs throughout the book and is unfamiliar today: a first coat of dry crumbs, then beaten egg, then a second crumb coat. Modern flour-egg-crumb serves the same purpose.
• Deep fat temperaturePeriod books judged the fat by how fast a cube of bread browned in it, roughly the range a modern cook would call about 375F. Smelts this size need only a few minutes; the fish is done before the crumbs go past golden.
• Sauce TartareIn this book that means mayonnaise with capers, chopped pickles or olives, onion and parsley folded in, not the sweetened commercial jarred version. It is served cold alongside, not over the fish.
• Buying smeltsSold whole and often frozen, frequently already gutted. Dry them thoroughly on towels before crumbing; residual moisture is the main reason breading slides off in the fat.
• YieldThe recipe gives no yield; allow several small fish per person. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop below temperature.