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Smelts, Britannia
Remove the heads and tails and thoroughly clean one and a half pounds very fresh, medium-sized smelts. Cut them into half-inch pieces, crosswise. Cut the same number very thin slices lean bacon the same length as the smelts. Have six clean skewers; run a skewer through the centre of a piece of bacon, then the same with a piece of fish, a piece of bacon, a piece of fish, and so on, until the pieces of fish and bacon are equally divided alternately on the six skewers, in the centre of same. Have on a plate one teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, one teaspoon curry powder and a tablespoon olive oil; mix well with a fork, carefully roll the skewers in the seasoning, then lightly in bread rumbs. Place on a double broiler and broil for six minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, squeeze the juice of half a sound lemon over and serve.
A skewer dish built on smelt, bacon and curry powder, written for a coal broiler. The main adjustments are the equipment and the cooking time — smelts are small and lean-fleshed, and twelve minutes total will dry them out under a modern element.
- What a double broiler isNot a double boiler. It means a hinged wire grill — two flat grids that clamp shut over the food so the whole thing can be turned as one unit. A folding fish grill or a flat perforated grill basket does the same job; without one, use a rack set over a foil-lined sheet pan and turn the skewers with tongs.
- Cut the timing backSix minutes a side suits a solid-fuel broiler. Under a broiler set 4 inches from the element, 3 to 4 minutes a side is enough — the fish is done as soon as it turns opaque and the bacon has coloured. Overcooked smelt goes dry and cottony.
- Buying smeltsLook for whole smelts about 4 to 6 inches long, often sold frozen. Fishmongers will usually gut them; "thoroughly clean" means gutted and rinsed. The fine skeleton is soft and edible, which is why the recipe can cut them crosswise through the bone without further work.
- Bacon slicesModern supermarket bacon is cut thicker than the "very thin" slices intended here. Ask for it thin-sliced, or stretch each slice with the back of a knife so it cooks through in the same few minutes as the fish.
- The seasoning pasteA teaspoon of salt across 1½ lb of fish plus bacon is on the high side, since the bacon is already cured — half a teaspoon is closer to the mark. Mix the salt, pepper, curry powder and oil into a slurry on a plate and roll the loaded skewers in it, then in crumbs; the oil is what makes the crumbs stick.
- SkewersSoak wooden skewers 20 minutes first, or use metal. "In the centre of same" simply means to keep the food grouped in the middle of each skewer so the ends stay clear for handling and for the grill to close over.
- A sound lemon"Sound" is period usage for unblemished and not shrivelled. Nothing more is meant by it.
- YieldSix skewers from 1½ lb of fish serves three as a main course, or six as a first course with bread.
Smelts were cheap and plentiful in early twentieth-century American markets — Atlantic runs supplied them by the barrel, and cookbooks of the period treat them the way they treat sardines or whitebait, as a small fish to be fried whole or skewered rather than filleted. The dish name is typical of the grand-hotel cooking this book records: kitchens attached the name of a ship, a hotel or a patron to a garnish or treatment, and "Britannia" here most likely signals the curry powder, the standard shorthand for British colonial taste on a French-trained menu. Curry powder as a single premixed jar was itself a British commercial product on sale from the late eighteenth century, sold to households that wanted the flavour of Anglo-Indian cooking without the spice cabinet, and by 1900 it appears to have been a familiar seasoning in American professional kitchens for fish, kidneys and broiled skewers of exactly this kind.