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Allumetes
Have some anchovies preserved in oil, wipe them from scales and oil, cut each into long strips. Have ready some plain paste rolled very thin; envelop each strip of anchovy in pastry and fry in very hot lard until crisp and yellow; serve log-house fashion; put fried parsley in the corners and serve very hot.
A savoury of anchovy strips wrapped in thin pastry and deep-fried, meant to be stacked like a miniature log cabin. The whole thing succeeds or fails on the pastry being thin and the fat being hot enough to crisp it before the filling weeps.
- "Plain paste"In this period plain paste means a short or flaky pastry made with fat and flour but no sugar and no yeast — not puff pastry, though bought puff works and gives a lighter match. Roll it as thin as you can handle it, about 1/16 inch; thick pastry stays raw against the fish.
- AnchoviesThe recipe assumes whole salt-cured anchovies packed in oil, which needed scaling and wiping. Modern oil-packed fillets are already skinned and boned, so simply blot them dry. If you use salt-packed anchovies, rinse and soak them 10 minutes or the finished allumettes will be inedibly salty.
- Frying fat and temperature"Very hot lard" gives no number; in modern terms a deep-frying temperature of around 375F is a reasonable reading. Lard was the period fat and works well; a neutral oil does the same job. Fat that is not hot enough lets the pastry absorb it and go heavy rather than crisp.
- SealingDampen the pastry edge and pinch it firmly along the whole length. Any gap lets oil in and the anchovy oil out, which spits.
- Fried parsleyDry the sprigs thoroughly, then drop them into the hot fat for 10 to 15 seconds only — they should stay bright green and turn brittle. Wet parsley will make the fat erupt, so pat it on a towel first.
- "Log-house fashion"The strips are stacked in alternating crossed layers like the corners of a log cabin, with parsley tucked into the four corners, as the recipe directs.
- Yield and serviceThe original gives no quantities. Reckon on a 50g tin of fillets and about 200g of pastry for four people. These belong at the end of a formal dinner as a savoury, or now simply as something with a glass of sherry — and they must be eaten within minutes of frying.
Allumette is French for match, and the name refers only to the shape: anything cut into thin sticks and fried or baked got the label, from these anchovy fingers to sugared puff-pastry strips and the potato pommes allumettes that became matchstick fries. Anchovy in pastry belongs to the British savoury course, the small hot salty dish served after the sweet and before the dessert fruit, a fixture of late nineteenth-century dinners that survives now mainly in anchovy toast and Scotch woodcock. English-language household cookbooks of the period absorbed a great deal of that Anglo-French dinner vocabulary wholesale, which is why an anchovy savoury carries a French name.