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Smelts Sauted in Brown Butter
Remove the gills, clean and wash the smelts, and when well dried roll them in flour. Place a lump of butter in a fryingpan, and when it is hot put in the smelts and brown them, turning when done on one side. Arrange some slices of hot buttered toast on a dish, put the fish on them and serve at once.
A plain pan-fry that depends almost entirely on dry fish and hot butter. The recipe's own instructions stop short of the browned butter the title promises, which is worth correcting at the stove.
- Buy the fish smallSmelts sold whole usually run 3-6 inches; count 4-6 per person as a first course, 8-10 as a main. Larger ones take a minute or two longer per side.
- CleaningRemoving the gills and gutting through the belly is enough — the heads and tails stay on, and the fine bones soften in cooking and are eaten. Many fishmongers sell them already dressed.
- Dry means dryThis is the hinge. Wet smelts steam rather than brown and the flour turns to paste. Blot them thoroughly in a towel, then flour and cook straight away, before the coating goes damp.
- Butter alone will scorchWhole butter over the heat needed to brown fish burns quickly. Use clarified butter, or half butter and half neutral oil, and keep the pan at a steady medium-high.
- TimingTwo to three minutes a side for small smelts. They are done when the flour crust is deep gold and the flesh at the backbone is opaque; overcooked smelts collapse.
- The brown butter the title meansLift the fish out, pour off the cooking fat, and add fresh butter to the hot pan. Swirl until it smells nutty and the milk solids are hazelnut brown, then spoon it over — a squeeze of lemon and chopped parsley is the usual finish.
- ToastCut the toast to fit under the fish and butter it while hot. It is there to take the butter and juices, so serve immediately or it goes soggy.
- BatchesFry in a single uncrowded layer. Two pans, or two batches held on a warm plate, beat one crowded pan where the smelts steam together.
Smelts were a cheap, abundant fish in turn-of-the-century New York — netted in quantity in the Hudson and along the Atlantic coast in the colder months, and sold small enough to eat whole. That combination of low price and fine flavor made them a fixture of hotel and restaurant menus, where they turned up fried, broiled, or sauced in the French manner. Beurre noisette, the browned butter of this dish's title, is the classic accompaniment to small pan-fried fish in French cookery, and its appearance here reflects the thoroughly French kitchen vocabulary of American grand hotels around 1900. The toast beneath is an older Anglo-American habit, a way of catching butter and juices.