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Anchovy Paste
Take a dozen anchovies, scrape them clean, raise the flesh from the bones, and pound them most thoroughly in a mortar; then press them through a fine sieve. Add about two ounces of butter melted, but not hot. The less butter used the stronger will be the flavour of the anchovies. Time, about half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for a small jar.
A two-ingredient potted paste that depends entirely on the quality of the fish. The whole method is in the pounding: the flesh must be reduced to a smooth cream before the butter goes in, or the paste stays fibrous and weeps.
- What "a dozen anchovies" meansWhole salt-cured fish from a tin or barrel, not the oil-packed fillets in a small flat tin. If you use oil-packed fillets, twenty-four fillets (about 100 g drained) is the equivalent, and you can skip the boning.
- Scraping cleanSalt-packed anchovies carry loose scales and a heavy crust of salt. Rinse them, rub the skin with your thumb under running water, then split along the belly and lift the backbone out with the tail; the flesh comes away in two fillets.
- Do not salt itCured anchovies are already at the limit of what most palates want. Taste before adding anything, and if the paste is too fierce, work in more butter rather than trying to correct it any other way.
- Butter temperature"Melted, but not hot" is precise and matters. Butter much above body heat will tend to split from the fish purée and pool on top as the jar cools, so melt it only just to the point of liquid and let it cool before it goes in.
- Mortar versus machineA small food processor does the work in a minute, but pulse rather than run it, and finish by pressing through a sieve as directed. The sieve is what removes the fine bone and skin that a blade only chops smaller.
- Timing and costThe half hour presumably covers the pounding and sieving. "1s." is one shilling, meaningless now but a signal that this was a cheap store-cupboard luxury. The yield is roughly 150 g, enough for a small jar.
- Keeping itWith only two ounces of butter there is no proper seal of clarified fat over the top, so this is not a preserve. Refrigerate it covered and use within a week; the flavour is at its best on the first or second day.
Anchovy in some pounded or bottled form was one of the great background flavours of British cooking from the eighteenth century onward, the savoury note behind steak sauces, devilled dishes, Welsh rarebit and the potted meats that filled a Victorian larder. Pastes and "essences" of anchovy were sold commercially in jars and bottles by the mid-nineteenth century. The fish themselves would have come salted in barrels from the Mediterranean, Gorgona and the Italian and Spanish coasts among the sources named in period cookery books, since fresh anchovy did not travel; the salt cure is why the recipe involves scraping and pounding rather than cooking, and why the finished paste tastes of ferment and umami rather than of fresh fish.