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Horly of Sardines
Skim, carefully split in two and bone twelve good-sized sardines in oil, place on plate, squeeze over juice of half a sound lemon, sprinkle over a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and carefully turn in seasoning without breaking. Prepare a frying batter, carefully turn sardines in it, then drop one by one in boiling fat and fry for eight minutes, turning with skimmer once in a while. Lift up, dry on a cloth, dress on hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six quarters lemon, a little parsley greens, and serve with a gill hot tomato sauce separately.
A French fried-fish preparation applied to tinned sardines. The one thing to change is the frying time — eight minutes will destroy them.
- Frying timeSardines in oil are already cooked; all the batter needs is to set and colour, which takes 60-90 seconds in fat at 375F. Eight minutes will turn the fish to paste inside a leathery shell.
- "Sardines in oil"These are tinned sardines. "Skim" means lift them from the packing oil; drain them well on paper before splitting, or the batter will slide off.
- BoningSplit along the belly, open the fish flat and lift the backbone out from the tail end in one piece. The fine pin bones in tinned sardines are soft enough to eat and need not be chased.
- "Turn in seasoning"Salt and pepper, turned through gently so the fillets stay whole. With the lemon juice and parsley this is a brief marinade — ten minutes is plenty, longer and the acid starts to break the flesh down.
- The batterNone is specified. A standard frying batter of the period is about 1 cup flour, a beaten egg, a pinch of salt and enough beer, milk or water to make a coating consistency; a stiffly beaten egg white folded in at the end lightens it.
- A gillHalf a cup, roughly 120 ml, of tomato sauce served in a boat alongside rather than poured over.
- The folded napkinA linen napkin on the platter absorbs frying fat and holds heat, standard service for fried fish in this era. Paper towel does the absorbing; the napkin is presentation.
- YieldTwelve sardines split gives twenty-four pieces — a first course for four, or a savoury for six.
Filippini's spelling is idiosyncratic: this is à l'Orly, one of the fixed preparations of the classic French repertoire, in which fillets of fish are marinated briefly in lemon and parsley, dipped in frying batter, deep-fried and sent out with tomato sauce apart. The name's origin is genuinely uncertain — it is variously traced to the town of Orly and to a cook of that name, and no explanation has ever commanded general agreement. What is telling here is the fish. Alexander Filippini spent his career at Delmonico's, where an Orly would have been made with sole or whiting; applying it to tinned sardines shows how thoroughly the canned Mediterranean sardine had entered the American larder by the early years of the twentieth century, cheap and shelf-stable enough to be dressed up in a restaurant garnish and served on a folded napkin.