Home › The Principles of Cookery › Anchovies, to Fillet
Anchovies, to Fillet
Wash the anchovies; cut off the heads and fins, scrape the skin, and split them open with the fingers and thumbs; remove the backbone, and cut each fillet, or side, in two. They may be seasoned with cayenne, and used for sandwiches. Time to soak, four hours. Probable cost, 1s., for a half-pint bottle. Sufficient for three or four persons.
This is a preparation, not a cooked dish: it assumes whole salt-cured anchovies packed in a bottle, which is a different product from the boned fillets in oil sold today.
- What the fish wereVictorian anchovies came whole and head-on, packed in dry salt or heavy brine and sold by the bottle; this entry prices a half-pint bottle. The nearest modern equivalent is salt-packed anchovies from an Italian or Spanish grocer, sold loose or in tins.
- If you are using oil-packed filletsThe whole procedure is unnecessary. Those have already been headed, boned, split and packed; drain them, pat dry and season.
- The four-hour soakThat length suits fish that has sat in dry salt for months. Modern salt-packed anchovies are usually rinsed under cold water and soaked 20 to 30 minutes at most, or steeped briefly in milk or wine; four hours will wash out flavour along with the salt. Taste a scrap before committing the batch.
- Splitting with the fingersThis is right and worth keeping. A salt anchovy opens along the belly under thumb pressure and the backbone lifts out whole in one piece, taking most of the pin bones with it. A knife tears the flesh.
- Scraping the skinThe silvery skin on salt-cured fish carries loose scales and grit from the salt. Scrape it under running water with the back of a knife; the skin itself can stay on.
- CostThe entry prices a half-pint bottle at a shilling, which suggests anchovies were a regular storecupboard item rather than an occasional extravagance, though a shilling was not a negligible sum against contemporary wages.
- Yield and useThree or four people, as stated, means enough fillets for a few rounds of sandwiches. Cayenne is the only seasoning the recipe offers; salt is already abundant. Butter mashed with the fillets and a little cayenne is one way to use them.
- KeepingFilleted anchovies do not keep as the whole salted fish do. Cover them in oil, refrigerate, and use within a few days.
Anchovies were one of the few concentrated savoury flavourings a British kitchen of this period had. The fish arrived salted from the Mediterranean, largely from Italian and Spanish waters, and were sold by the bottle for use in anchovy sauce, anchovy butter, anchovy toast and the fish-paste relishes that filled out breakfast and supper tables. Filleting salt anchovies was a routine preliminary skill rather than a made dish, which is why the entry is a bare preparation.