Food - Bee Wilson thinks there's something fishy going on
Asparagus and strawberries; strawberries and asparagus. When we see them and smell them - and we can hardly avoid them - we know the English summer has begun and that Wimbledon and cricket and the Blair family jaunt in Tuscany are just around the corner. Curiously, the anticipation and pleasure we now find in asparagus and strawberries, fruits of May and June, were once felt for plates of fried whitebait, those translucent, teeny-tiny fish you munch whole. In summer months in the 19th century, the whitebait dinner was the cause of high excitement. Alexandre Dumas wrote of people travelling as many as 800 miles to London, to eat whitebait fished out of the Thames. Thomas Love Peacock, the poet, celebrated a feast taken at "fam'd Blackhall" on a scorching day, with "whitebait, daintiest of our fishy fare". Whitebait even had the approval of government. Every year, soon after Trinity Monday, the Cabinet would meet at Greenwich for a ministerial whitebait dinner.
In her Fish Book (Penguin, £7.99), Jane Grigson describes the birth of this agreeable custom. The Cabinet dinner originated with the MP for Dover, a wealthy merchant called Robert Preston, who "had a cottage on the banks of Dagenham Reach, an idyllic sort of place". At the end of May, Preston used to invite his friend George Rose, secretary to the treasury, down for a day of whitebait, wine and conversation. One year, Rose brought along Pitt, the prime minister. The occasion was such a success that the whitebait dinner became a yearly institution. It was moved to Greenwich, for convenience, and held in either The Ship or the West India Dock Tavern for almost all of the 19th century. It is pleasing to think of all those politicians getting their chins covered in fish grease, looking forward to the parliamentary recess. But Gladstone eventually decided the ritual was too frivolous, and cancelled it. I don't suppose there's much chance of the current lot reviving it.
Apart from any other reservations, they might have trouble getting hold of the whitebait at this time of year. Whitebait - which are not a separate species of fish, but the small fry of various fish, mostly herring - seem in short supply in British shops during May and June. According to Jeremy Round's excellent book The Independent Cook (just reissued by Pan at £6.99), May is "the high season for whitebait", but several fishmongers I spoke to denied this point-blank. "People what write books don't know anything, do they?" said one, assuring me that the real season for whitebait is in January or February. Can anyone throw some light on this? Is it just, as Jane Grigson suggests, that most of our whitebait gets frozen before we have the chance to buy it?
Still, this is not a column to be deterred by anything as trivial as the unavailability of this week's ingredient. If I did have some, I would coat them in flour and fry them, maybe with a little cayenne. In Italy, where the equivalent of whitebait is called gianchetti or bianchetti, they might be fried alongside courgette flowers. I offer this recipe on the off chance that some fishmongers are more forthcoming, or that you have managed to catch a few yourself. It comes from a strange book called The Dinner Question by a Victorian drag artist styling herself "Tabitha Tickletooth", first published in 1860 (reissued in 1999 by Prospect Books). Tabitha writes:
"Spread a clean napkin upon a table, cover it within half an inch of the edge with fine sifted flour (say half-inch thick), next sprinkle lightly, by small handfuls, about a pint or more of the bait, taking care that it is spread all over the flour; have ready about three pounds of good and sweet lard in a deep frying pan [I think I'd use oil]; let this be getting hot while you proceed as above. Observe carefully when the least vapour rises from the lard, for it then is hot enough. Now hasten to toss the flour and bait together from end to end upon the napkin; have ready a coarse can sieve, throw the whole into it, sift away the flour quickly and throw the bait into the hot lard, or rather shake it in by degrees, but quickly, or part will be dressed and the other not, moving the frying pan backwards and forwards to spread the whole, and prevent the fish from adhering, keeping the pan upon the fire. Have a wire slice or ladle ready at hand, apply this cautiously among the fish, and if they sound crisp and hard, remove them quickly into a colander, drain one minute, sprinkle lightly with fine salt, toss them over, and serve upon a dish, with a napkin, instanter. The whole process should not take more than six or seven minutes [I should say three]."
Then eat your whitebait dinner with a great deal of lemon juice, bread and butter, and a few of your Cabinet colleague friends.
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