Fried Halibut
Carefully wash and dry firm slices of the fish and remove the skin. Salt and pepper each slice and dip in beaten egg and then in cracker dust or crumbs. Add a little butter to a pan half full of boiling lard to make the fish brown nicely. Drop in the slices and fry till done, turning so as to brown both sides. Or, wash, dry and season the slices as directed, then dredge with flour and fry in hot pork-drippings, the latter made by frying brown thin slices of pork.
A straightforward pan-fry from a 1911 general household cookbook, written for cooks who kept a crock of lard and rendered pork fat by the stove. Two versions are given: egg-and-crumb, or a plain flour dredge in pork drippings.
- Fat depth and temperatureThe recipe's "pan half full of boiling lard" is a fairly deep fat, though a depth of about half an inch is enough for steaks an inch thick. Aim for roughly 350-365F -- hot enough that a crumb sizzles briskly but the coating does not scorch before the centre sets.
- Why the butter goes inButter is added to the lard for colour and flavour, not for frying power; its milk solids brown fast. Add it just before the fish goes in, or it will blacken while the fat comes up to heat.
- Cracker dustThis is finely crushed plain soda or water crackers, the period's standard breading. Unsalted saltines pulsed to a coarse powder are the closest match; panko gives a coarser, crunchier crust than intended.
- Cook it far less than "till done" suggestsHalibut is very lean and turns dry and cottony past about 130-135F at the centre. Steaks an inch thick need roughly 3-4 minutes a side; pull them while the middle is barely opaque and still yielding.
- Slice thickness"firm slices" most likely means cross-cut steaks, probably bone in, about three-quarters to one inch. Thinner fillets will overcook before the crumb browns; thicker cuts are better finished in a 375F oven for a few minutes after browning.
- TurningTurn once only, and with a wide spatula. Egged-and-crumbed fish loses its crust if it is nudged repeatedly, and halibut flakes apart readily once cooked through.
- Pork drippingsThe second method renders fat from thin slices of pork, most likely salt pork or fatty side pork. If salt pork is used, that fat is already salty, so cut back the salt on the fish. Bacon fat is the nearest modern stand-in, though it carries smoke flavour the original would not have had.
- YieldFigure one steak of six to eight ounces per person. Serve immediately — the coating softens within minutes under its own steam.
Halibut was the great utility fish of the North Atlantic and North Pacific fleets in the late nineteenth century, familiar enough by the 1890s to appear in general household books rather than only in coastal cookery. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book as part of a broad line of domestic manuals aimed at middle-class households, and the recipe's structure shows it: a single technique with an alternate version depending on what fat was in the kitchen. The choice between lard and pork drippings was a matter of thrift as much as taste: drippings were a by-product no careful cook discarded, and thin slices of salt pork could be fried out to make the medium. The egg-and-cracker-crumb coating is the standard American breading of the period, appearing across croquettes, cutlets and fish alike; commercially baked soda crackers were reliable enough by then that "cracker dust" needed no explanation.