To Fry Fish
After the fish is well cleansed, lay it on a folded towel and dry out all the water; when well wiped and dry, roll it in Indian meal. Have a thick-bottomed frying pan with plenty of fat salted (a tablespoonful of salt to each pound of lard) for fresh fish which have not been previously salted; let it become boiling hot, then lay the fish in and let it fry gently until one side is a fine, delicate brown, then turn the other; when both are done take it up carefully and serve quickly, or keep it covered with a tin cover, and set the dish where it will keep hot.
A plain cornmeal fry, written before thermometers were common in kitchens. The whole recipe hinges on the fish being genuinely dry before it touches the meal.
- Indian mealThis is cornmeal, not a spice mixture. Fine or medium yellow cornmeal gives the crispest coating; coarse stone-ground meal stays gritty unless the fish cooks long enough to soften it.
- Dry the fish properlyThe towel step is the one that matters. Surface moisture turns the meal to paste and it slides off in the pan, so blot both sides and the cavity, then coat just before frying rather than letting the fish sit in the meal.
- Salting the fatA tablespoon of salt per pound of lard is a period habit that also seasons the fish through the crust. Salt does not dissolve in fat and will settle and scorch on the pan bottom; salting the fish itself before coating does the same job more evenly.
- "Boiling hot" fatFat does not boil at any temperature a frying pan reaches, so the phrase means shimmering and just short of smoking. The book gives no figure; in modern terms this is somewhere in the region of 350-375F. Cooler than that and the coating absorbs grease; a cube of bread should brown in about a minute.
- Fat and panLard gives the period flavour, though refined vegetable oils actually have the higher smoke point and work perfectly well. "Plenty of fat" here most likely means shallow frying, a third or so of the way up the fish, rather than deep frying. Cast iron holds the heat when cold fish goes in.
- TimingWhole pan-sized fish such as perch, trout or croaker need roughly 4-5 minutes a side; fillets 2-3. Turn once only, and only when the first side releases from the pan on its own.
- Holding it hotThe tin cover will steam the crust soft within minutes. A rack in a 200F oven, uncovered, keeps fish hot without ruining the coating.
- YieldFigure one small whole fish or a 6-ounce fillet per person.
Cornmeal-fried fish in lard is one of the longest-running American cooking habits, from colonial river fisheries through Southern and Midwestern home kitchens to the present fish fry. Wheat flour was generally the more expensive coating through much of the nineteenth century, while cornmeal was cheap, widely on hand, and fries into a drier, crisper crust. Much of the instruction here is about handling rather than proportion: wipe the fish, keep the pan thick-bottomed, turn once, serve quickly. The direction to hold the dish under a tin cover suggests a kitchen without a warming oven.