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Anchovy and Caper Sauce
Take a piece of butter the size of an egg; melt it in a saucepan; stir into it, with a wooden spoon, half a teacupful of flour; then add a quarter of a pint of water. When boiling, add two anchovies boned and chopped small, with a dessert-spoonful of bruised capers. A little lemon-juice is an improvement. Time, ten minutes. Sufficient for a small dish of fish. Probable cost, 6d.
This is a Victorian "melted butter" sauce — the English roux-based mother sauce that stood behind most fish dishes of the period. The proportions as printed are very stiff, so read the liquid note before you start.
- Butter the size of an eggRoughly 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Victorian recipes commonly gave butter by comparison to a familiar object rather than by weight.
- The flour is ambiguous, and highA teacupful is usually reckoned at about 5 fl oz (a quarter pint), so half a cup is somewhere near 1¼ to 1½ oz of flour. Against a quarter pint (5 fl oz) of water that gives a paste rather than a sauce; either halve the flour or use a full half pint of liquid for something you can pour.
- Cook the roux before the water goes inStir the flour into the butter over low heat for a minute or two so it loses its raw taste, then add the water gradually off the boil to avoid lumps. The ten minutes of simmering afterwards is what makes the sauce taste finished rather than pasty.
- AnchoviesThe original means whole salted anchovies, boned at home. Four tinned fillets in oil, drained and mashed, stand in for the two whole fish. They dissolve into the sauce as it simmers, so chop small and expect no visible pieces.
- SaltAdd none until the end. Between the anchovies and the capers the sauce is already salty, and reducing concentrates it.
- Capers"Bruised" means crushed with the flat of a knife to release their flavour. Rinse salt-packed capers first; brined ones can go in as they are, and a teaspoon of the brine can replace the lemon juice.
- LiquidWater is the economical version. Using milk gives the pale anchovy sauce served with boiled cod and turbot; fish cooking liquor gives the most flavour.
- YieldAbout three-quarters of a cup as written -- enough for two or three portions, matching the 'small dish of fish' of the original. Double it for four.
Melted butter — flour, butter and water, cooked briefly — was the workhorse sauce of the English kitchen from the eighteenth century onward, and the jibe that the English possessed only one sauce was long repeated, though its attribution is uncertain. Its virtue was that it took additions readily: parsley for boiled fowl, egg for salmon, anchovy and caper for white fish. Anchovies reached British kitchens as salt-packed imports from the Mediterranean and were valued as much for their saltiness as their flavour, which is why bottled anchovy essence and potted anchovy pastes were familiar items in the Victorian store cupboard. Capers, the pickled flower buds of Capparis spinosa, were another southern import; pairing the two with fish follows a very old logic of using preserved, sharply salted goods to season a bland fresh ingredient. The recipe gives the probable cost as sixpence, the kind of figure that let a household cook judge what a dish would run to.