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Smelts with Bacon
Neatly wipe twelve good-sized smelts, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly roll in flour, dip in beaten eggs, then lightly roll in bread crumbs. Arrange them in a frying basket, fry in boiling fat for ten minutes, remove, drain on a cloth and sprinkle a little salt over them. Dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six quarters lemon and parsley greens, arrange six slices broiled bacon over them and serve.
A straightforward breaded fry from the Delmonico's tradition, with one number that has to change: ten minutes will turn small smelts to leather.
- Frying timeSmelts of this size need only a few minutes in fat at 350–375F, until the crumbs are deep gold. At properly hot fat the ten minutes given here would dry the fish out; the longer time may allow for fat run cooler than a thermometer-controlled fryer.
- "Boiling fat"This means fat at frying heat, not literally boiling — around 350–375F. Test with a crumb: it should sizzle briskly and rise at once. Lard or beef fat was standard; a neutral oil behaves the same.
- Cleaning the fish'Neatly wipe' is all the recipe says about cleaning; smelts were often sold ready to cook, and small ones were fried whole, head and bones eaten with the rest. If yours are ungutted, slit the belly and pull the innards with a thumbnail, then wipe dry. Dry fish is what makes the flour adhere.
- Breading orderFlour, then egg, then crumbs, each layer light — heavy coating slides off in the fat. Season the fish itself as directed rather than the crumbs, and let the breaded smelts sit five minutes before frying so the coating sets.
- The bacon"Broiled" here means cooked under direct heat or in a dry pan until crisp. Do it first and hold it warm; the smelts must go to the table straight from the fat.
- Frying basketA wire basket lets you lift all twelve at once, which matters when the window is three minutes. Without one, fry in two batches and keep the first warm in a low oven on a rack, not on paper, so the crust stays crisp.
- The folded napkinA period serving convention: a linen napkin on the hot platter absorbed draining fat and kept the fish from sitting in it. A rack or a warmed plate does the same work.
- YieldThe recipe gives no serving count; the six lemon quarters and six slices of bacon suggest it was portioned for six, two smelts each, with the lemon and parsley as the only accompaniment.
Smelts — in North America usually the rainbow smelt, Osmerus mordax — ran in enormous spring shoals up coastal rivers and, later, the Great Lakes, and were sold by the pound as a cheap, abundant fish that needed no filleting. That made them a staple of the fried-fish course in American hotel and restaurant cookery around 1900, the world in which this book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York. The dish shows the house style plainly: a modest fish given a French breading, then dressed on a napkin with lemon quarters and parsley and crowned with bacon, so that something a fishmonger sold by the basket arrived looking like a composed plate. The bacon is doing double duty — flavour, and a bit of fat to stand in for a sauce that a fried course could not carry.