Doubtless the word sardine comes from the Italian island, Sardinia,
around which the small fish used for canning abound.
Small fish of various other kinds are a favorite article of diet all
over Italy. In Venice, for instance, among the most characteristic
sights are the numerous little shops in which piles of fried fish are
exposed for sale inside the open window, if window there be. They are
eaten with slices of polenta, or thick corn meal mush, cut off with a
thread from a huge loaf. The gondolier, as he passes by, exchanges his
penny for some of this food and departs munching it with evidence of
perfect satisfaction.
The oil used for frying these little fishes is not, as a matter of
course, the virgin oil of the month of May. But it is infinitely better
than the "cooking-butter" sent to the kitchens of thousands of wealthy
Americans. It is more economical, too, than our frying baths. When the
French composer Massenet, a noted gourmet, visited Italy for the first
time, he enjoyed a meal consisting of "an excellent snail soup and fish
fried in oil which must have done service in the kitchen at least two
or three years."
It is acknowledged by epicures of all lands that in the art of frying,
the Italian cook ranks supreme. In the more expensive eating houses
butter (not "cooking butter") is often used, but the national way is
to fry in oil, and when the oil is prime the result is delicious. An
American girl, who married an Italian, writes to me from the Riviera
Ligure: "Oil is used for frying, and it seems to me everything is
fried--even green vegetables get a bath of hot oil. When butter is used
it is for a condiment."
Fried food in England and America is usually greasy and indigestible
because the cook does not understand that a deep frying-kettle is best,
that the oil (or whatever liquid is used) must _at the start_ have a
temperature of nearly 500° Fahrenheit, so that a thin film may form
immediately over the outside of whatever is to be fried, thus keeping
in all the juices and flavors; and that whatever oil may adhere to the
food after it is fished out must be allowed at once to drain off on a
napkin or otherwise. The Italian cooks seem to know all these things
instinctively, the result being that their fried foods come up to the
test given by Mary Ronald, who remarks in the _Century Cook Book_ that
properly fried Saratogo chips can be eaten out of hand without soiling
one's gloves.
_Fritta mista_ is one of the chefs d'œuvre of the Italian cook.
The first time I ate one was in Rome. We went to a little restaurant
marked in Baedeker with a star. After eating the mixed fry containing
sweetbreads, shredded artichoke bottoms, brains, cocks-combs, truffles
and other delicacies, done to a turn, we decided that the restaurant
deserved two stars.
It will be noticed that the favorite fritta mista consists largely
of things that Americans have only recently learned to use or still
despise. The value of sweetbreads, which used to be thrown away, has
been discovered--they are now almost worth their weight in radium.
Brains would be equally relished by nine Americans out of ten--if not
by all--if they would taste them fried as served to me on August 22,
1912, at Como. I give the date because it was a memorable gastronomic
event.
The Italians are like the French in relishing these "trimmings." Mary
Ronald relates an amusing story of a French family who moved into
one of our Western towns where calves' heads, livers, brains and
sweetbreads were still undiscovered luxuries. They wrote home that the
price of living there was nominal because the foods which they most
prized were given away by the butchers as food for dogs.
Many years ago Sir Henry Thompson tried to persuade the British to
substitute olive oil for lard. His advice affords at the same time an
amusing glimpse of a certain culinary custom: "Excellent and fresh
olive oil, which need not be so perfect in tint and flavor as the
choicest kinds reserved for the salad bowl, is the best available
form of fat for frying, and is sold at a moderate price by the gallon
for this purpose at the best Italian warehouses. Nothing, perhaps,
is better than clarified beef dripping, such as is produced, often
abundantly, in every English kitchen; but the time-honored traditions
of our perquisite system enable any English cook to sell this for
herself, at small price, to a little trader round the corner, while
she buys, at her employer's cost, a quantity of pork lard for frying
material, at double the price obtained for the dripping. Lard is,
moreover, the worst menstruum for the purpose, the most difficult to
work in so far as to free the matters fried in it from grease; and we
might be glad to buy back our own dripping from the aforesaid little
trader at a profit to him of cent per cent, if only the purchase could
be diplomatically negotiated."