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ANCHOVIES, ESSENCE OF (another way)
Remove the bones from three anchovies, and beat them into a paste with four green chillies, or a small quantity of cayenne pepper, and two shallots. Then mix them with a quarter of a pint of walnut ketchup, and half a pint of mushroom ketchup, and preserve the essence in well-closed bottles. Time, half an hour to prepare. Sufficient for one pint bottle. Probable cost, 2s.
This is a store-cupboard flavouring rather than a dish, and it is one of the Victorian preparations that does not translate: raw fish and alliums are bottled for keeping with no heat treatment and no measured salt or acid. The notes below explain the units and the ingredients, and why the method itself is the problem.
- Why it failsNothing in the recipe is cooked, and nothing establishes a known pH or salt concentration. Pounded anchovy and shallot bottled at room temperature is the kind of sealed, oxygen-poor, potentially low-acid environment in which Clostridium botulinum can produce toxin. The Victorian cook relied on the assumed saltiness and sharpness of the ketchups; neither is a control you can verify.
- The anchovies have changedA Victorian anchovy came from a barrel of heavily salt-cured fish that had been packed for months. Modern anchovy fillets in oil are a much milder, wetter product with far less salt, so even the incidental preservation the original assumed no longer applies.
- The ketchups have changed tooNineteenth-century walnut and mushroom ketchups were long-brewed, very salty, vinegar-sharp liquids used as keeping sauces. Bottled versions sold today, where you find them at all, are seasoned condiments formulated for flavour rather than for preserving other ingredients.
- Imperial measuresA quarter of a pint is 5 imperial fluid ounces, about 140 ml; half a pint is about 285 ml. British pints run 20 fl oz, not the American 16, so recipes of this vintage scale up by a quarter against US cups.
- "Four green chillies"No variety or heat level is given, and the cayenne alternative is equally unquantified, so the seasoning was left to the cook's judgement.
- Probable costTwo shillings was a substantial outlay for a single pint bottle. The imported anchovies and the two ketchups were all bought goods.
- If you want the flavourAnchovy essence, anchovy paste and Worcestershire sauce are commercially made relatives of this kind of preparation, produced under controlled acidity and heat. Use a current recipe or a bought bottle rather than this one.
Essence of anchovies was one of the great Georgian and Victorian flavouring bottles, kept beside the cayenne and the mushroom ketchup and used by the spoonful to give depth to fish sauces, steaks, gravies and devilled dishes. Its ancestry is usually traced to the fermented fish sauces of the ancient Mediterranean \ Roman garum and liquamen \ reaching British kitchens by way of the salted anchovy trade and a taste for pungent bottled relishes; the same impulse produced Worcestershire sauce, itself built on anchovy. By the time Cassell's was compiled, branded essences were sold ready-made, and the book's "another way" simply marks a second recipe for the same item in its dictionary format. The recipe also shows how much Victorian cooks depended on the two ketchups, walnut and mushroom, as all-purpose savoury bases.