[Sca-cooks] Batter frying--the origin of fish and chips?

[Robert Downie]

David Friedman wrote:

> I recently got into an exchange on a newsgroup, growing in part out of 
> a webbed piece about the origin of fish and chips. That got me curious 
> about how early the technique used for the fish--dip in batter and 
> deep fry--appears. Can anyone think of examples, for fish or even for 
> other things, in the period corpus? The closest that occurred to me 
> was fritters--but it isn't clear to me if they were deep fried, and I 
> don't think any of them were fish.
>
> The webbed piece was:
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3380151.stm 

The 15th C. Portuguese cookbook, Livro de Cozinha da Infanta D. Maria 
has a recipe for dipping food in egg and then deep frying it (not quite 
a batter as such, but similar concept...).  The Galinha Albardada recipe 
calls for dipping chicken pieces and bread slices in egg before frying 
them  in butter.  "Albardar" is still a comonly used culinary term today 
in Portuguese kitchens.

Faerisa