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Anchovy Salad
Wash six anchovies in water, remove the bones and the insides, and also the heads, fins, and tails. Put them on a dish with two large lettuces cut small, half a dozen young onions, a salt-spoonful of chopped parsley, and a sliced lemon. Pour over them the juice of a lemon mixed with salad-oil, and send to table. Time to prepare, ten minutes. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for a small dish.
A ten-minute assembly whose only real technique is taming the salt in the fish. The anchovies of this book are whole salt-packed ones, not the oil-packed fillets in a modern tin.
- The anchoviesWhole salt-cured anchovies, bought from a barrel or crock, are what the instruction to remove heads, fins and insides refers to. Rinsing under the tap is the minimum; 20-30 minutes in cold water, changed once, brings them into balance. If you use oil-packed fillets instead, halve the quantity and skip the boning entirely.
- Salt-spoonfulRoughly a quarter teaspoon. Victorian salt spoons varied in size, so treat this as an approximation rather than a fixed measure.
- Salad-oilOlive oil, and most likely a mild one rather than a green peppery estate oil. No quantity is given; start with about three tablespoons of oil to the juice of one lemon and adjust to taste.
- The lettucesTwo "large lettuces" of the period means cos or a loose butterhead, not iceberg. Shredded, two heads give a generous quantity of leaves for six anchovies; scale down if the dish is to stay 'small'.
- Young onionsSpring onions or scallions, trimmed and sliced thin including some green. Six is generous with salt fish; taste as you go.
- The sliced lemonProbably laid around the dish rather than eaten in quantity. If you want it edible, slice it paper-thin and take the pith off.
- SaltDo not add any. The fish carries all the salt the dish needs, which is why no seasoning appears in the original list beyond the parsley.
- Yield and timing"A small dish" is not quantified in the original; treat it as a light first course for a few people. Dress it at the last moment, as the lemon juice wilts cut lettuce quickly.
Salt-cured anchovies were a pantry staple in British kitchens long before the tin, arriving in casks from the Mediterranean and used less as a fish than as a seasoning agent, the same role they play in Worcestershire sauce and anchovy paste. A strongly salted fish against plain leaves and acid was the whole point.