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Whitebait with Bacon, Farm Style
Dip one pound very fresh, picked, washed and drained whitebait in a little cold milk, place on a sieve, dredge six tablespoons of cornmeal flour over them and shake well. Cut two ounces of raw, lean bacon into small, thin strips. Place both fish and bacon in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat for two minutes. Lift up, sprinkle a half teaspoon salt and a saltspoon cayenne pepper over, shake well in the seasoning, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six quarters lemon and a little parsley greens and serve.
A deep-fried appetizer of a kind that once appeared on hotel menus everywhere, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen. Two details carry it: the fish must be bone dry before the milk dip, and the fat must be hot enough that two minutes is genuinely enough.
- Fat temperature"Boiling fat" simply means deep fat hot enough to fry hard; no temperature is given, and modern deep-frying practice for small fish sits around 375F. If the fat is cooler the coating absorbs oil and the fish steam rather than crisp; the point of a two-minute fry is fat hot enough to set the cornmeal at once.
- Cornmeal flourThis is fine cornmeal, not cornstarch and not a coarse polenta grind. Fine yellow cornmeal gives the sandy crust the recipe is after.
- SaltspoonAn old measure of about a quarter teaspoon. A full quarter teaspoon of cayenne on one pound of fish is assertive but deliberate; scale back to a pinch if you want the fish rather than the pepper forward.
- Two minutes, and not moreWhitebait are a few inches long at most and cook through almost on contact. Left in until deep brown they turn bitter and dry, and the tiny bones stop being pleasant.
- The baconCut it as thin as you can manage and no thicker than the fish, so it crisps in the same two minutes. Much modern supermarket bacon is wet-cured and holds a lot of brine; blot it dry before it goes near the fat, or it will spit badly.
- Whitebait nowIn practice this means the fry of sprat or herring, sold frozen at Greek, Italian and Asian markets, often as marides or silverfish. They are eaten whole, ungutted and unheaded. Thaw completely and dry on towels, or the milk dip will not hold the meal.
- Draining and dressingThe folded napkin on the hot dish is a linen blotter, doing the job of a wire rack. Any drainage that keeps the fish off their own oil works; do not cover them, or the crust softens within a minute.
- YieldOne pound of whitebait with the bacon serves three or four as a first course, two as a light main. Fry in batches so the fat does not drop below temperature, and salt each batch as it comes out.
Whitebait is not a species but a catch: the undersized young of herring, sprat and related fish, taken in vast quantities in European estuaries and eaten whole. In England the whitebait dinners held at Greenwich and Blackwall were an institution, cabinet ministers included, traditionally tied to the close of the parliamentary session in late summer, and the standard treatment was a flour dredge, a fast fry and cayenne with lemon. This version is the same dish moved indoors and given cornmeal and bacon, the "farm style" of the title signalling an American gloss on a European staple. The frying basket and the napkin-lined dish belong to hotel and restaurant service; the timing is stated to the minute and the seasoning goes on after the fry rather than before.