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Fish Fritters
Pick free from all bones a quantity of any kind of cold cooked fish and pound it in a mortar; take a small onion, peel and pound it with the fish; season to taste with salt and pepper, and add an equal bulk of mashed potatoes, mix well together and make all into a paste with beaten egg. Spread the paste out on a board, cut it into small pieces about three inches across and fry them in boiling lard to a light brown. Fold a napkin over a hot dish and pile the fritters on it. Garnish with fried parsley and serve with any kind of fish sauce.
Fish, Normandy Style Melt in a bakingdish five ounces of butter on the stove or in an oven; sift into it one dessertspoonful of chopped parsley, a very little grated nutmeg, a small quantity of salt and black pepper, a very little red pepper, and one tablespoonful of mushroom catsup; add five pounds of any kind of fish without skin or bone and cut in pieces about four inches long and an inch and a half wide. Pour in three tablespoonfuls of brandy and four tablespoonfuls of white wine, fit the cover on the dish, put a flour and water dough round the edge to keep the steam in and bake in a moderate oven. Serve very hot.
Two related dishes run together here: a fritter made from leftover fish, and a sealed baked fish scented with brandy and mushroom catsup. Both are workable, but the quantities and vessels need translating.
- The paste must be stiffThis is the hinge of the fritter. Add beaten egg a spoonful at a time until the mixture just holds together — one egg is usually enough for two cups of fish and potato. A wet paste cannot be rolled out or cut, and it will disintegrate in the fat.
- Mortar or processorA food processor does in seconds what the mortar did in ten minutes, but pulse rather than run it. Fish pounded to a purée gives a pasty fritter; you want it shredded fine with some texture left.
- "Boiling lard"Lard does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously the instant food enters. Use 360–375F. Below that the potato absorbs grease, above it the outside browns before the centre heats through. Two to three minutes a side gives the "light brown" called for.
- Three inches across is largeCut them smaller — two inches — unless you flatten them well. Thick three-inch pieces of cold fish and potato take longer to heat than the crust takes to colour.
- Fried parsleyDry sprigs dropped into the same fat for about fifteen seconds, until the sizzling stops. Wet parsley will spit hard, so blot it thoroughly first.
- The napkinA folded linen napkin under fried food was a common service convention of the period; it absorbed fat and kept the pile from sliding. A rack over a warm plate does the same job with less laundry.
- Mushroom catsupNot tomato ketchup. This was a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract closer to Worcestershire sauce or a light soy. Either of those, or a good mushroom ketchup if you can find one, gives the intended savoury note.
- Moderate oven, and how longRead 'moderate' as about 350F. Five pounds of fish in a covered dish should be done in roughly 25-35 minutes depending on thickness; the fish should just flake. The original gives no time, as was usual in recipes of this kind, which left the judgement to the cook.
- The dough sealA rope of flour-and-water paste pressed round the lid — a luting paste — seals the dish so no steam escapes. It is not eaten. A sheet of parchment under a tight lid, or foil crimped over the rim, achieves the same thing.
- YieldThe fritters, from a cup or two of cooked fish, make a first course for four. The Normandy fish at five pounds serves eight to ten and scales down cleanly — halve the butter and liquids with the fish.
Oscar Tschirky's book belongs to a hotel kitchen that wasted nothing: a fritter built from cold cooked fish, an onion and yesterday's mashed potatoes is the professional answer to the remains of a large poached salmon or turbot. The "Normandy style" label was applied to fish cooked with the butter, cream, cider or spirits associated with the dairy and orchard country of northern France, though this version uses brandy and white wine rather than cider or cream. The flour-and-water rope around the lid is older still — luting a pot shut was a standard way to trap steam and aroma before close-fitting metal lids and gasketed cookware, and it survives in the paste seals used for game pies and some braises. Mushroom catsup was a common English and American store-cupboard seasoning, and its near-disappearance is a large part of why this recipe reads oddly now.