How to Dress Whitebait
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fish
Spread a clean napkin on a table and cover it with ½ inch of flour.
Sprinkle 1 pint of whitebait over the flour evenly.
Toss the flour and bait together on the napkin.
Sift the mixture through a coarse sieve to remove excess flour.
Fry and serve
Heat 3 pounds of lard in a deep frying pan until it begins to vaporize.
Quickly add the bait to the hot lard in small batches, moving the pan to prevent sticking.
Use a wire slice to check if the fish are crisp, then remove them to a colander.
Drain for 1 minute, sprinkle lightly with fine salt, toss, and serve immediately.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Whitebait
- The small fish are the main ingredient, cooked whole until crisp in the hot fat.
- Flour
- A light dusting coats the fish so they crisp and brown rather than steam.
- Lard
- Hot fat conducts heat quickly, frying the fish to a crisp exterior.
The step that matters
Adding the bait to the hot lard in small batches. Crowding the pan drops the fat temperature, so the fish soak up oil and turn greasy instead of crisp. Small batches keep the fat hot and the coating firm.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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