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Deviled Whitebait
Wash the fish, drain well on a sieve, dry them in a soft cloth and then drop them on a well-floured cloth, carefully rolling each little fish over in it, so that they shall all be nicely and evenly floured. Put them immediately into a frying-basket, and dip them into extremely hot boiling lard; hold it there for a very short time, lift the basket out of the lard, and dust the fish over with black pepper and a small quantity of salt; some cooks dip them again into the boiling lard for a second, remove them, sprinkle with cayenne pepper, and serve.
A frying recipe with no quantities, no temperature and no yield — everything depends on the fat being hot enough and the fish being bone dry. Read it as technique rather than as a formula.
- The hinge: fat temperatureThe recipe gives no number; "extremely hot boiling lard" is generally taken to mean somewhere in the region of 375-390F. Whitebait are so small that anything cooler poaches them into limp grey threads before the coating sets; at the right heat they are done in well under a minute, which is all the "very short time" of the text can mean.
- What whitebait areThe tiny fry of herring, sprat or similar, eaten whole — head, tail and all. Fishmongers and Asian and Mediterranean grocers sell them frozen; thaw fully and blot dry, since surface water is what makes the flour go pasty.
- Quantity and yieldOscar gives none. Figure 4 oz per person as a first course, about 1 lb for four, and count on 2 to 3 lb of lard or a neutral oil to give a deep enough bath.
- The floured clothRolling the fish in a floured towel rather than a bowl is deliberate — it coats them in the thinnest possible film and leaves no clumps. A large sheet of parchment or a paper bag does the same job.
- Small batchesFry a large handful at a time. A crowded basket drops the fat below temperature and the fish stick together into a raft.
- The second dipThe optional return to the fat is a brief crisping, not a second cooking — the recipe says "for a second." It is also what carries the cayenne, which should go on while the fish are still glistening so it adheres.
- "Deviled"Here the word signals cayenne and black pepper, nothing more; there is no mustard or sauce in this recipe. Season assertively, as the fish themselves are mild.
- ServingThe recipe says only "serve." The customary accompaniment is lemon wedges and thin brown bread and butter, sent out immediately and piled loose. They soften within a few minutes of leaving the fat.
Whitebait was a fashionable London fish long before it reached Fifth Avenue: through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the little fry were netted in the tidal Thames and eaten at the riverside taverns of Greenwich and Blackwall, where a Cabinet "whitebait dinner" became an annual political ritual. The standard Greenwich service was plain fried whitebait — dried, barely floured, plunged into very hot fat and eaten by the handful with lemon and brown bread. Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893, was cooking for a clientele that took its cues from London and Paris, and the "deviled" version, finished with cayenne, was a variant rather than the norm, reflecting the late-Victorian taste for peppered savouries served as a first course or after-theatre supper. The reliance on lard rather than oil is simply the frying medium of the period; the fish, then abundant and cheap, is now a seasonal and in some waters regulated catch.