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Parsley, Crisp
Crisp parsley is generally used for garnishing dishes. Pick and wash a handful of young parsley. Shake it in a cloth to dry it thoroughly, and spread it on a sheet of clean paper in a Dutch oven before the fire. Turn the bunches frequently until they are quite crisp. Parsley is much more easily crisped than fried. Time, six or seven minutes to crisp. Probable cost, 1d.
A garnish technique from the era of open coal fires, easily adapted to an oven. The whole point is dry heat gentle enough to dehydrate the leaf without browning it.
- The Dutch oven hereNot the heavy lidded pot. A Victorian Dutch oven was an open-fronted tin screen set on the hearth to reflect fire heat onto food. The book gives no temperature; a low oven, in the region of 250-275F, is a reasonable modern substitute, though the heat is more even and less fierce than a reflector's.
- Dry the parsley properlyThis is the hinge. Any water clinging to the leaves steams rather than crisps them, and the result is limp and olive-coloured. Shake in a towel, then leave spread out for a few minutes before heating.
- TimingSix or seven minutes was for radiant fire heat, which is fierce and one-sided. In a 250-275F oven allow 10-15 minutes, checking often; the leaves should shatter at a touch and stay bright green.
- Curly, not flatThe recipe's "young parsley" refers to tender new growth rather than to a variety, but the parsley grown for garnishing in Victorian Britain was generally the curled kind, which holds its shape and crisps into a decorative tuft. Flat-leaf parsley dries to something closer to a flake.
- Frying the alternativeThe comparison to frying refers to dropping dry sprigs into hot deep fat for a few seconds. It is faster, but spits with any residual moisture. The book says only that crisping is the easier of the two and does not say why.
- Cost1d is a penny of pre-decimal currency, cited to show the garnish cost essentially nothing.
The technique belongs to the hearth: a Dutch oven, meaning the reflecting tin screen rather than the modern pot, stood before the range and gave a cook a source of steady radiant heat for toasting, drying and reheating small things while the fire did other work. Crisp parsley was a standing item of the Victorian kitchen's finishing work, scattered over fried fish, cutlets and made dishes. Fried parsley appears in English cookery books through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the book here simply notes that crisping is the easier method. Garnishing on this scale faded with the plated service of the twentieth century, though deep-fried parsley survived on fish menus well into living memory.