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Crisped Parsley
Wash some young parsley; pick away the decayed or brown leaves, and shake it in a cloth till it is quite dry. Spread it on a sheet of paper, and put it in a Dutch oven before a clear fire; turn it very often until it is quite crisp. Time, about a quarter of an hour. Sufficient, a little to garnish a dish.
A Victorian garnish that survives mainly as fried parsley; the oven method here is gentler and keeps the leaf green rather than dark. Two details govern the result: the parsley must be genuinely dry, and the heat must be low.
- "Dutch oven" means the reflector, not the potIn cookery books of this period a Dutch oven is a tin hood open on one side, set on the hearth to catch and bounce radiant heat from the fire, which is what "before a clear fire" implies here. It is not the cast-iron casserole the name now describes. A conventional oven at a low setting, around 275-300F with the door slightly ajar or vented, is the nearest modern equivalent.
- Dry the leaves properlyAny water left clinging steams the parsley limp instead of crisping it. Shake it hard in a clean cloth, then spread it in a single layer and let it air a few minutes before it goes near heat.
- Paper, and a rimmed trayBaking parchment on a sheet pan replaces the loose sheet of paper. Loose leaves will lift and scorch if the oven has a fan; switch the convection off.
- The timingA quarter of an hour is right for the slow radiant heat of a hearth and holds roughly for a 275-300F oven. Check at eight minutes: the leaves should shatter when pressed and still read green. Once they brown the flavour turns dusty and bitter.
- Turn it often, as instructedThe leaves nearest the heat crisp first. Lifting and redistributing them every few minutes is the difference between an even garnish and half a tray of burnt fronds.
- The frying alternativeDropped into 350-375F fat, dry parsley crisps in ten to twenty seconds and spits vigorously as it does. It is faster and darker in flavour; the oven method is what this recipe is for.
- Yield and keepingA large bunch of curly parsley reduces to a small handful; the recipe reckons a little enough to garnish a dish. It softens within hours, so make it just before serving.
- Which parsleyCurly parsley, the sort generally used in British kitchens of the period, holds its shape and crisps best. Flat-leaf works but collapses into something closer to a dry flake.
Crisped or fried parsley was one of the small standard finishes of nineteenth-century British cooking, set alongside fried fish, cutlets, sweetbreads and grilled kidneys to give a plate texture and a bank of green. It was treated as a technique every kitchen was expected to have to hand, like clarifying butter or making browning. The hearth-side reflector oven it calls for was still ordinary equipment in the period: the closed range was spreading through middle-class houses, but the open fire with its tin Dutch oven, bottle jack and toasting fork remained in daily use, and cookery writers of the period routinely gave both. The garnish itself is generally traced to French practice, where persil frit was long the conventional accompaniment to fried fish.