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Fried Smelts, Tartare Sauce
Clean and wipe dry twelve medium, fine, fresh smelts. Season evenly with a teaspoon salt and a saltspoon white pepper. Gently roll them in flour, then dip in beaten-up eggs, lightly roll in fine bread crumbs, and plunge them into boiling fat to fry for five minutes. Remove with a skimmer and lay on a dry cloth to thoroughly drain. Dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin. Decorate with parsley greens and six small pieces of sound lemon in quarters.
A straightforward breaded fry that depends almost entirely on fat temperature and on not overcooking a very small fish.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon. With a full teaspoon of salt for twelve fish this is a fairly assertive seasoning; season the fish, not the crumbs.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil. The phrase means deep fat at frying heat, about 375F. Below 350F the crumb coat absorbs grease; above 400F it colours before the fish is through.
- Five minutes is too longSmelts run four to seven inches and cook through in two to three minutes at 375F. Five minutes dries the flesh and darkens the crumbs. Fry in two batches so the fat does not drop.
- CleaningSmelts are traditionally eaten whole, bones and all. Gutting is enough; the heads may be left on or removed to taste, and the fine skeleton softens in the fry.
- The breadingFlour, egg, crumb is standard, but the fish must be genuinely dry before the flour goes on or the coating slides off in the fat. Let the breaded fish rest ten minutes before frying to set the crust.
- The tartare sauceThe title promises it and the text does not give it. In a book of this period tartare generally means mayonnaise with chopped capers, gherkins, shallot or onion and parsley, sharpened with a little vinegar or lemon; a recipe for it may well appear elsewhere in the same volume.
- SourcingRainbow smelt are sold fresh in late winter and early spring in the Northeast and Great Lakes, and frozen year round. Frozen smelts should be thawed and patted very dry.
- YieldTwelve medium smelts serve two as a main course or four as a first course. The folded napkin on the platter was there to absorb draining fat, and a rack over paper does the same job.
Smelt were once so abundant in the rivers of the northern United States and Europe that they were reportedly sold by the bucket during the spring run, which made them a cheap fish that nonetheless carried a restaurant reputation: small, sweet, and considered elegant when fried whole and served with lemon and a sharp sauce. Their name in English is old, and the fresh fish is often said to smell faintly of cucumber, a quality traditionally held to be the test of freshness. The presentation here, banked on a folded napkin with parsley and quartered lemon, is standard hotel service of the period; the napkin caught the last of the frying fat and let the crust stay crisp on the way to the table. Tartare sauce, a cold mayonnaise cut with capers and pickles, became the near-automatic partner to any deep-fried fish in French-influenced kitchens of the late nineteenth century, and this book's pairing reflects that convention rather than any regional tradition.