No. 1163

Gudgeons or Whitebait Fried in Butter

Goujons ou Blanchaille Frits au Beurre

After having cleaned, prepared, and salted the fish, roll them in flour; set them in a coarse sieve and sift off rapidly the superfluous flour, then plunge them into hot frying lard. Melt clarified butter in a pan, when hot lay in the gudgeons that are nearly finished frying, or any other small fish; toss them about, adding small bits of butter, lemon juice, and chopped parsley; dress on a hot dish, and pour the hot butter over.

← No. 1162 Grouper a la Franklyn Shad, Herring & Mackerel No. 1164 Haddock, Ancient Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes two pans going at once: a deep one of frying fat and a shallow one of clarified butter to finish. The whole thing takes about three minutes, so have everything ready before the fish goes in.

The hinge: don't finish them in the fatThe fish come out of the frying lard just short of done and are tossed in hot clarified butter with lemon and parsley for the last seconds. That butter is the dish; skip the transfer and you have plain fried smelt.
The fishGudgeon is a small European freshwater carp relative you will not buy in America. Whitebait means the fry of herring or sprat, eaten whole, ungutted, heads on. Substitute smelt, fresh anchovies, sand eels, or the smallest sardines, roughly 2 to 4 inches.
"Cleaned, prepared, and salted"For true whitebait this means rinsing and drying only — no gutting. For smelt, remove the gills and viscera if they are over about 4 inches. No timing is given for the salting; a light scattering shortly before flouring, patted dry, suits the method.
Frying lardAny neutral fat at 350–375°F works. The fish are done in 1 to 2 minutes and should stay pale gold, not brown; they go dry and cottony almost immediately after.
The sieveA coarse sieve and a brisk shake is still the best way to shed loose flour. Excess flour burns in the fat and clouds the finishing butter. Flour in small batches and fry at once, or the coating turns pasty.
Clarified butterWhole butter will scorch and its milk solids will speckle the fish. Clarify it in advance — melt, skim, pour off the clear fat — and keep it warm. The "small bits of butter" added at the end are unspecified; taken as whole butter they would thicken the pan juices slightly.
YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon 4 to 6 ounces of small fish per person as a first course, with lemon wedges and brown bread.

A Little History

Whitebait was a London institution long before Charles Ranhofer put it on a Delmonico's menu: taverns along the Thames at Greenwich and Blackwall served the tiny fry of herring and sprat through the spring, and an annual Whitebait Dinner for cabinet ministers at Greenwich was a fixture of nineteenth-century political life. Gudgeon, its French counterpart in this heading, was the classic friture of the Seine and the Marne, sold by riverside guinguettes. Ranhofer, who cooked at Delmonico's in New York from 1862 and published The Epicurean in 1894, kept both names because his kitchen worked in French and his clientele expected the European reference, even when the fish in the basket was American smelt. The placement under shad, herring and mackerel is not arbitrary — whitebait is largely the fry of herring and sprat.