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Whitebait, Virginia
Dip in a little cold milk one pound very fresh whitebait, place on a sieve, sprinkle six tablespoons cornmeal flour over and shake well. Cut two ounces of lean, raw Virginia ham into thin strips half an inch long. Place both fish and ham in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat for two minutes. Lift up, drain on a cloth, season with a half teaspoon salt and saltspoon cayenne pepper. Shake the seasoning well in, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six quarters of lemon and a little parsley greens and serve.
A two-minute fry that lives or dies on the temperature of the fat and the freshness of the fish. Everything else is dressing.
- Fat temperature"Boiling fat" means deep fat at roughly 375F. Below that the cornmeal coating absorbs grease and the tiny fish collapse; the whole point of the dish is that it comes out dry and crisp in about the time it takes to count to a hundred.
- WhitebaitNot a species but a catch-all for the fry of herring, sprat, silversides or anchovy, sold whole and eaten head, tail and all. Fresh is specified for good reason: they are oily and turn rank fast. Much of the whitebait now sold is frozen, and it must be thawed and patted very dry or the coating will slide off in the fat.
- Cornmeal flourFinely ground cornmeal, closer to what is sold as corn flour or fine polenta than to coarse meal, and not cornstarch. Six tablespoons is generous for a pound of fish; the sieve-and-shake method is there to knock off everything that has not clung.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon holds about a quarter teaspoon. With cayenne that quantity is assertive for a pound of fish, so add half and taste.
- Virginia hamA dry-cured, salt-heavy country ham, aged and firm, quite unlike supermarket sliced ham. Cut it into matchsticks no thicker than a whitebait so it crisps in the same two minutes; a lean prosciutto or speck cut the same way behaves similarly. If you use a wet-cured deli ham it will steam rather than crisp and weep salt water into the fat.
- Frying basketA wire basket keeps the fish from welding to the bottom of the pan and lets you lift the whole batch at once, which matters when the window is 120 seconds. Fry in two or three loads rather than one, or the fat temperature drops and the fish poach.
- The napkinA folded linen napkin under the fish was standard service for anything deep-fried; it absorbs the last of the fat and stops the pile sweating on hot porcelain. A paper liner does the same job.
- YieldA pound of whitebait with the ham serves four as a first course, or two as a light main.
Whitebait was a fashionable set piece of Victorian and Edwardian dining, most famously in the whitebait dinners held at Greenwich taverns on the Thames, where the tiny fish were floured, fried and eaten by the plateful with lemon and brown bread. Versions of the dish appear in American hotel cookery, and this one shows a local turn: wheat flour gives way to cornmeal, and salt-cured Virginia ham is shredded in to fry alongside the fish, which is presumably what earns the regional tag. The folded napkin and parsley garnish suggest dining-room rather than household service. Modern cooks should note that whitebait catches are regulated in some places, since the fish are taken before spawning; buying from a managed fishery is worth the trouble.