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Jewish Recipe for Frying Fish
Mix 6 ounces of flour, a pinch of salt, yolk of one egg, and 1 ounce of olive oil, well together, add 1 gill of tepid water, set aside 1/2 hour in a cool place. Beat in the white of the egg, which has been beaten stiff, dip each fish in this, then in bread-crumbs, and fry in oil or fat, very hot. The Jews do not use butter for frying, as their religious laws forbid it, but they are, the world over, past masters of the art of frying, and especially in the older cities of Europe, where they have kept to the ancient modes of living.
A light frying batter enriched with oil and lightened with beaten egg white, then given a crumb coat. The original assumes you know what fish to use and how hot the fat should be.
- The gillA gill is 5 fl oz in imperial measure and 4 fl oz (half a US cup) in American; which is meant depends on the book's origin. Either way, with 6 ounces of flour (about 1 1/3 cups) this gives a thick, clinging batter rather than a pourable one.
- Why the batter restsThe half hour in a cool place lets the flour hydrate and the gluten relax, so the coating fries crisp instead of tough. Fold the beaten white in only at the last moment and use the batter straight away, before it deflates.
- Fat temperature"Very hot" here means 350-375F. Below that the oil soaks in and the crumb coat goes greasy; much above it and the crust colours before the fish is done.
- The fishThe recipe does not say what fish to use. Small flat fish or fillets — sole, plaice, whiting, haddock — suit it, cut into pieces no more than an inch thick, which will cook through in three or four minutes a side.
- Batter and crumbs togetherDipping in batter and then breadcrumbs is unusual to modern eyes and produces a heavy, very crunchy shell. Other versions of Anglo-Jewish fried fish use egg and crumbs, or batter alone.
- Butter and the dietary lawsFish is pareve, neither meat nor dairy, so frying in oil rather than butter keeps it servable at a meat meal. Olive oil in the batter and oil in the pan are both doing that work.
- YieldNo yield is given; this quantity of batter would coat roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb of fish. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the underside stays crisp.
- ServingFish fried this way was as often eaten cold as hot, and the oil-based batter stays firm as it cools — worth knowing if you are making it ahead.
Fried fish in this style is Sephardi, brought to Northern Europe by Portuguese and Spanish Jewish families and long associated with Amsterdam and with London's East End by the middle of the nineteenth century. It is generally traced as one ancestor of British fish and chips, the fried-fish half of the pairing arriving through Jewish cooks and the potatoes from elsewhere. The habit of frying on Friday to eat cold on the Sabbath, when no cooking is done, explains both the sturdy coating and the tradition of eating it at room temperature.