The frying of fish for those Friday meals likely has roots in cuisine traditions stretching from the cooking fires of Caribbean-born slaves to the fishing shacks and camps found on every lake and stream throughout the Finger Lakes. With the arrival of these settlers, Roman Catholic churches and parochial schools became commonplace, as did the obligation to abstain from eating meat on Fridays. For more than 2,000 years, Catholics have observed meatless Fridays as a visible sign of their faithfulness and penance, especially during the 40-day period leading up to Easter Sunday known as Lent.įrom the early 1800s through the first half of the 20th century, the Finger Lakes region saw an influx of immigrants from the traditionally Catholic countries of Italy, Ireland, Poland and the Catholic provinces of Germany. Meat was a costly food considered by some early Christian theologians to be responsible for inflaming passions and promoting gluttonous appetites, to do without it encouraged bodily and spiritual discipline. Bread, vegetables and later fish, could be consumed, but meat was forbidden on pain of mortal sin. In his book Fish on Friday, Brian Fagan notes that from the beginning of Christianity, Friday, the day of Christ’s death on the cross, was established as a weekly day of penance for the faithful.

Prompted by curiosity and my stomach, I decided to undertake an imperfect investigation on the meaning and measure of the Friday night fish fry dinner. In the winter months, it’s a favorite fundraiser meal offered in volunteer fire halls and church kitchens.

A menu staple across the Finger Lakes, this dinner, along with its sandwich counterpart, can be found at eateries large and small, inexpensive or upscale. Though the market is gone and we left the Ithaca area a dozen years ago, our Friday custom of a fish fry dinner continues. Once in the kitchen, he would place a brown paper sack on the counter and begin pulling out his epicurean treasure purchased at his favorite seafood market in Ithaca – two large pieces of fried fish, wrapped in white paper, a side container of coleslaw and an order of fries spilling out of a red-checked paper boat. On those evenings, a distinctive aroma would waft into the house before he even opened the back door. Twenty-five years ago, my husband introduced me to his Friday night dinner ritual.

Family fish market near me