Whitebait

Ingredients

• a pint of whitebait
• about three pounds of best white flour
• sprinkle a little salt over

Method

1. 1

   Soak whitebait in cold water with ice.

2. 2

   Coat in flour, fry in hot lard for two minutes, drain, and serve on a hot dish with lemon and fried parsley.

3. 3

   For deviled whitebait, add cayenne pepper and salt.

Nutrition per serving

Estimated from matched ingredients across 6 servings.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Soyer's standard cookery (1912) by Nicolas Soyer, page 68. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

Whitebait. Although always ready and willing to partake of a dish of this sweet little fish when dining-out or lunching at some fa- vorite restaurant, the average housewife rarely, if ever, essays to cook the dish at home, being under the impression that it is beyond her powers. I hope to prove that this idea is erroneous and can promise that if my instructions are faithfully carried out, the simplicity of the operations and excellent results will make such an appeal that whitebait will, in future, often figure on the menus of quite ordinary homes. PROCEDURE. — Take a pint of whitebait and place in a large bowl of cold water, to which ice has been added. (It is a good plan to stand the bowl on ice if that can be managed.) Now place two clean cloths on a table, side by side. On one of these place a heap (about three pounds) of best white flour. Have your frying fat (lard is the best) smoking hot on the fire. Now take a handful of the whitebait, shake it free of water, and sprinkle the fish on top of the flour heap. Put your frying-basket on the empty cloth. Now take up, by its four corners, the cloth with the flour and fish and tip out its contents into the frying-basket, placing the emptied cloth back in position on the table. Now shake the basket gently until, the flour having fallen to the cloth beneath, only the fish are left. Immerse the basket with fish in the boiling fat and cook for two minutes, giving the basket an occasional shake. At the end of this time, lift basket, allow fat to drain for a moment and then tip out fish on to a large flat dish (very hot) upon which a sheet of white paper has been previously placed. Re- peat these operations (always standing the empty frying- STANDARD COOKERY. 97 basket on that cloth which has no flour upon it) until all the whitebait has been cooked. When it is time to serve, replace all the whitebait in the frying-basket and plunge into the boiling fat for a further two minutes. Drain free of fat, and tip out whitebait on to a hot dish, previously covered with a clean white napkin. Garnish with quarters of lemon and fried parsley sprigs and serve smoking hot, together with thin slices of brown bread and butter. Deviled Whitebait is prepared exactly as above with the addition of a seasoning of cayenne pepper and salt. Whitebait (Another Method.) Put them in a cloth, which shake gently so as to dry them; then place them in some very fine bread-crumbs and flour mixed; toss them lightly with the hands, take them out im- mediately, and put them in a wire basket, and fry them in hot lard; one minute will cook them; turn them out on a cloth, sprinkle a little salt over

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.