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Stuffed Anchovies
Split a sufficient number of anchovies, and wash thoroughly in white wine; then bone them.
Mix cooked minced fish with fine bread crumbs, and make a paste with yolk of eggs; stuff the anchovies with this mixture, then dip them into batter and plunge into boiling fat till a light brown. Drain, place on dish, and serve with fried parsley.
A savoury from the era when a small fried fish arrived at the end of dinner rather than the start. The whole thing hinges on what kind of anchovy you begin with.
- Which anchoviesThis calls for whole salt-cured anchovies, the kind sold packed in coarse salt and still bearing head and backbone. Oil-packed fillets in a tin are already split and boned and will disintegrate; they cannot be stuffed.
- The wine washThe recipe gives no reason for the rinse; with heavily salted fish it would serve mainly to draw out salt, though the wine will leave some flavour of its own. Modern salt anchovies usually need more than a rinse: a soak of about 30 minutes in cold water, changed once, before the final wine rinse, or the finished dish may be very salty.
- BoningOnce soft, open each fish along the belly with a thumbnail and lift the backbone out from the head end in one pull. The two fillets stay joined along the back, which is what makes a pocket for the stuffing.
- The stuffing"Cooked minced fish" is left open; any cooked fish, flaked and chopped fine, will do, and leftovers are the obvious source. Bind with breadcrumbs and just enough raw yolk to hold - the mixture should be stiff enough to sit on a spoon, or it will leak into the fat.
- BatterNo batter is specified. A plain flour-and-water or flour-and-beer coating batter of thick cream consistency would suit; it should cling rather than pour off.
- Frying temperature"Boiling fat" is not a measured instruction; in modern terms deep fat of about 350-375F answers to it. Below that the batter absorbs grease; above it the coating colours before the stuffing has warmed. Small fish take only 2-3 minutes to reach light brown.
- Fried parsleyCurly parsley, dried completely on a cloth, dropped into the same fat for about 15 seconds until it stops hissing and turns brilliant green. Wet parsley will make the fat erupt.
- Yield and servingThe recipe says only "a sufficient number"; three or four stuffed anchovies a head is a reasonable reckoning for a savoury or appetiser. Serve at once - they go soft within minutes of leaving the fat.
Anchovies were one of the great flavour-props of the nineteenth-century English kitchen - as essence, as paste, as an ingredient in Worcestershire-style sauces. The savoury course, a small hot salty dish served after the sweet and before dessert, was firmly established in British dining by the later Victorian period, and anchovies on toast, anchovy straws and devilled anchovies all filled it. Stuffing and frying them, with a farce of leftover cooked fish bound with yolk, dresses up a cheap salt-cured fish and wastes nothing. Fried parsley was a common garnish for fried fish in this period, and turns up beside whitebait, smelts and soles alike.