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Anchovy Sauce
(For fish.) Work a teaspoonful of anchovy paste with two teaspoonfuls of Pompeian Olive Oil until very smooth; then work in, a little at a time, four tablespoonfuls of Pompeian Olive Oil, and then add a tablespoonful of lemon or lime juice, a pinch of salt, a pinch of paprika and a teaspoonful of chopped parsley or chives. As the anchovy paste is salted, one must taste the sauce to ascertain how much salt to use.
This sauce may be served with all forms of fish dishes either hot or cold. 3. 3.
A cold anchovy vinaigrette rather than a cooked sauce, and it comes together in about three minutes. The only technique that matters is the order of addition.
- Start with a paste, not a pourThe two teaspoons of oil worked into the anchovy paste first are there to break up the paste completely. If you dump all the oil in at once you get grey specks suspended in oil instead of a smooth sauce.
- Total quantitiesRoughly 1 teaspoon anchovy paste, 4 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon citrus juice. That yields something over 1/3 cup.
- Anchovy paste todayTubed anchovy paste is still sold and is the direct equivalent. Two or three oil-packed anchovy fillets mashed fine will substitute, though their saltiness varies as much as the paste's, so taste as the recipe directs.
- Salt lastThe original is right to insist on tasting. Anchovy paste varies enormously in salt from brand to brand, and some contain added vinegar as well, which will affect how much lemon you want.
- It will separateThere is no egg or mustard here, so nothing holds the emulsion. Make it shortly before serving, or whisk it again at the table.
- Serving hotThe "hot or cold" most likely refers to the fish dishes rather than to the sauce; spooning it over hot fish is the safer reading, since warming an unemulsified oil-and-juice mixture will split it.
- The trailing "3. 3."A printing artifact from the original booklet, probably a page or plate reference. It is not part of the method.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets issued by the Pompeian olive oil business in the early twentieth century, when American cooks were being coaxed away from cottonseed oil and lard toward olive oil; the brand is named repeatedly in such booklets, which is why the oil is specified twice in a four-line sauce. The sauce itself belongs to a long British and Anglo-American habit of using concentrated anchovy — essence of anchovy, anchovy butter, anchovy paste — as a savory seasoning for fish rather than as a fish in its own right, a habit that gave us Gentleman's Relish and put anchovy into Worcestershire sauce. The Pompeian name presumably traded on the association of olive oil with ancient Rome and on the fame of Pompeii; the pairing of oil, salted fish and herbs is often traced to Roman cooking, where the fermented fish sauce garum played a similar seasoning role, though the connection here is atmosphere rather than descent.