Butter, Anchovy
INGREDIENTS. -6 anchovies, 1 lb. of butter, a small bunch of parsley. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 8d.
Wash, bone, and pound the anchovies, scald the parsley, chop it and rub it through a sieve, then rub all the ingredients together thoroughly. This is very nice served with cold fish.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Butter, Browned. INGREDIENTS. lb. of butter, 1 tablespoonful of minced parsley, 3 tablespoonfuls of vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.
BUTTER, CLARIFIED.
Put the butter into a frying-pan over a nice clear fire, and when it smokes, throw in the parsley, and add the vinegar and seasoning. Let the whole simmer for a minute or two, when it is ready to serve.
This is a very good sauce for skate.
TIME.- hour.
A compound butter of the simplest kind: salt-cured anchovy pounded to paste, green parsley purée, and butter worked together cold. Everything depends on the butter staying soft but never melted.
- Butter quantityThe stated pound of butter against six anchovies gives a very mild result, and the printed fractions on this page are unreliable (the browned-butter recipe below reads simply "lb. of butter"), so the original may well have called for less. Treat the ratio as elastic: six salt anchovies or a scant tablespoon of anchovy paste will season 4 oz of butter assertively.
- Which anchoviesThese are whole salt-cured anchovies, which is why they need washing and boning. Oil-packed fillets from a tin are already boned, so drain them, blot the oil, and taste before adding any salt.
- Softened, not meltedWork the butter at cool room temperature so the mixture stays an emulsion. If it melts and separates, the finished butter will weep when it warms on the plate.
- Scalding the parsleyThirty seconds in boiling water, then straight into cold, fixes the colour and takes the raw edge off. Squeeze it dry before chopping or the water will loosen the butter. A sieve works, but a small food processor does the job faster.
- Yield and keepingFour ounces of butter serves eight to ten as a garnish. Roll it in parchment into a cylinder, chill firm, and cut coins to lay on cold fish; it keeps a week refrigerated and freezes for three months.
- ServingBeeton intends it for cold fish, but it is equally at home melting over grilled fish, lamb chops, or hot toast.
Compound butters — butter pounded with an anchovy, a herb, a shellfish coral or a spice — were the Victorian kitchen's shortcut to a sauce, and Beeton's book lists a run of them together under B. Anchovy in particular did the work that bottled sauces and stock cubes do now: salt-cured Mediterranean anchovies reached British larders in barrels and kegs and were the backbone of anchovy essence, Worcestershire-style sauces, and the fish sauces served with boiled turbot and skate. Because the fish arrived whole in salt rather than filleted in oil, recipes of the period routinely begin with washing, boning and pounding, a step that has quietly vanished from modern instructions.