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Sardines Fried in Batter
Drain fish and pour over boiling water to free from oil, then remove skins. Dip in Batter III, fry in deep fat, and drain on brown paper. Serve with Hot Tartare Sauce. 1 can tomatoes 6 cloves 1/8 cup sugar 3 slices onion
A tinned-fish savoury from the era when canned sardines were a staple of the pantry and a respectable entrée in their own right. The instructions assume you have the book's numbered batters and sauces to hand.
- The stray ingredient listThe line beginning "1 can tomatoes 6 cloves" belongs to a neighbouring recipe and has nothing to do with the sardines. Ignore it; there is no tomato in this dish.
- Pouring over boiling waterThis is the hinge. Draining alone leaves a film of packing oil that keeps batter from sticking and turns rancid-tasting in the fryer. Scald, drain, and blot the fish thoroughly dry before dipping, or the coating will slide off in the fat.
- Skin and boneModern skinless, boneless fillets in oil skip the skinning step entirely; if you buy whole sardines, lift the backbone out as well as the skin so the pieces hold together.
- Batter IIIBatter III is one of the book's numbered fritter batters; the page here gives no ingredients, so check the original. Any standard fritter batter of about a cup of flour, an egg, and enough milk or water to make a batter that coats the back of a spoon will do the same work.
- Deep fatThe recipe names neither fat nor temperature. Any deep-frying fat at roughly 375F answers; the fish is already cooked, so you are only setting the batter: one to two minutes to a deep gold, no more, or the fillets dry out and break.
- Brown paperUnbleached grocery paper was the standard drain. Paper towels or, better, a wire rack over a tray keep the underside from steaming soft.
- Hot tartare sauceHot Tartare Sauce is a separate numbered recipe in the book and is not the cold mayonnaise-based tartare familiar now; look up the original rather than assuming. A warm remoulade-style sauce or plain lemon serves the same purpose.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield. A standard tin will give only a few fritters -- enough for two as a light entrée, or to stretch further as a savoury alongside other dishes.
Tinned sardines were among the first canned goods to become widely cheap and available, and by the late nineteenth century they were a fixture of the American larder. Commercial sardine packing is generally traced to the French Atlantic coast in the early nineteenth century, in the wake of Appert's preserving work; the American industry grew up around Eastport, Maine, from the 1870s, where herring too small for the smokehouse were packed in oil and sold as sardines. A frugal tin of fish, freed of its oil, jacketed in batter, fried, and served with a hot sauce, becomes an entrée fit to appear in the middle of a dinner rather than at the edge of a picnic.