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SALAD DRESSING (Italian)
Remove the skin and bones from an anchovy, pound the flesh well, and mix with it a tea-spoonful of mixed mustard. Add very gradually four table-spoonfuls of Lucca oil, beat the sauce well, and add two tea-spoonfuls of garlic vinegar, two of chilli vinegar and four of white-wine vinegar. When the sauce is smooth and thick like cream it is ready for serving.
A pounded-anchovy vinaigrette that leans far more acid than modern taste expects. The ratio is the thing to understand before you start.
- Lucca oilLucca, in Tuscany, was the standard source of good table olive oil for Victorian British kitchens, and "Lucca oil" was simply the grocer's term for olive oil of eating quality. Use a mild, fruity extra-virgin oil; a fiercely peppery one will fight the anchovy.
- Mixed mustardThis means mustard already made into a paste with water, not dry mustard powder. A teaspoon of smooth English mustard is the closest match; Dijon works and is gentler.
- The anchovyThe recipe assumes a whole salt-cured anchovy, which is why it has skin and bones to remove. Two or three oil-packed fillets give roughly the same weight of flesh. Rinse salt-packed fish and pat dry, or the dressing will be inedibly salty.
- The acid balanceFour tablespoons of oil against eight teaspoons of vinegar is close to 3:2 oil to acid, sharp by any modern standard. Taste as you build and stop adding vinegar when it suits you rather than following the count blindly.
- Flavoured vinegarsGarlic and chilli vinegars were common household preparations, made by steeping the aromatics in vinegar for some days or weeks; the base vinegar varied from one recipe to another. Substitute white wine vinegar plus a crushed garlic clove and a pinch of chilli flakes, left to sit for twenty minutes and strained.
- Getting it thick"Smooth and thick like cream" means an emulsion, and the reliable route to it is to add the oil to the anchovy-mustard paste a few drops at a time at first, beating hard. The mustard, helped by the pounded anchovy, does the emulsifying work; adding oil quickly risks breaking it.
- YieldAbout 100 ml, enough to dress a salad for four to six. It thickens further in the refrigerator and will need a brisk whisk before serving.
The label "Italian" here rests almost entirely on two ingredients: the anchovy and the Lucca oil. Salted anchovies pounded to a paste were a Mediterranean seasoning long before they were an English one, and by the late nineteenth century British cooks knew them chiefly through bottled sauces and anchovy essence. The flavoured vinegars, by contrast, are thoroughly domestic; garlic, chilli, tarragon and elder-flower vinegars were made at home in quantity and lined the store cupboard. What the recipe really records is a Victorian kitchen assembling an idea of Italy out of the ingredients it happened to stock.