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Fried Brochette of Smelts
Thoroughly wipe twelve fresh medium smelts, place on a plate, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Cover with cold milk, let stand for fifteen minutes, lift up from seasoning and roll in flour. Have six skewers, then carefully run a skewer through the eyes and tail of each smelt, taking two smelts on each skewer, place them in a frying basket, then fry in boiling fat for ten minutes. Remove, drain well, sprinkle a little salt over them, dress on a dish with folded napkin, decorate with six pieces lemon, a little parsley greens and serve.
A straightforward deep-fry, but the timing belongs to an era of cooler, less controlled fat. Smelts are small and cook fast.
- Ten minutes is far too longMedium smelts of 4-6 inches are cooked through in about 3 minutes in fat at 365F. Ten minutes will dry the flesh and darken the flour coating well past pleasant.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around the food, roughly 350-375F. Use a thermometer and fry in two batches so the temperature does not crash.
- SkeweringRun a thin metal or soaked bamboo skewer through the eye of one fish and out through its tail, then repeat with the second, which is the likeliest reading of the instruction. The apparent point is that the fish hold their shape and lift out of the basket together.
- The milk soakFifteen minutes in salted, peppered milk seasons the fish and gives the flour something to grip. Lift out and drain briefly before dredging or the coating goes pasty.
- Buying smeltsSold whole, frozen or fresh, usually cleaned. If not, gut them but leave heads and tails on, as the recipe assumes. The bones are soft enough to eat.
- Frying basketA wire basket keeps the skewers off the bottom of the pot. A spider or slotted spoon works, but lower the skewers in gently so the coating is not knocked off.
- The napkinDressing fried fish on a folded napkin was standard hotel service; the linen absorbs residual fat. A rack over paper does the same job before plating.
- YieldTwelve smelts on six skewers would suit roughly three people as a first course, or two as a main; the recipe itself gives no number. The six pieces of lemon are called decoration in the text, but they are also what the fish would be squeezed with at table.
Smelts are small silvery fish that run up coastal rivers to spawn in late winter and early spring, and their brief, predictable season made them a fixture of northeastern American and northern European tables well into the twentieth century. Serving them en brochette is a French restaurant convention: threading two fish on a skewer keeps them from breaking up in the fryer and lets a waiter present them upright and neat. The folded napkin, the lemon pieces and the parsley are service-era plating, a common finish for fried fish sent out of a professional kitchen of the period.