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Anchovy Salad
8 salted anchovies, or 12 bottled anchovies. 4 hard-boiled eggs.
I head of lettuce.
INGREDIENTS.
Juice of half a small lemon.
French or mayonnaise dressing, or Sauce tartare.
Method. If salt anchovies are to be used, soak them in cold water two hours, then drain, dry, and remove skin and bones; divide the flesh into small pieces and squeeze the lemon juice over them.
When ready to serve, arrange the lettuce leaves upon a serving-dish, stalk ends at the centre, cut the eggs in slices, mix with the bits of anchovies, and arrange upon the lettuce. Pour a French or mayonnaise dressing made with onion juice, or a sauce tartare, over the salad.
A composed salad of the old school, where the dressing is poured over at the table rather than tossed through. Nearly all of the work is in taming the anchovies.
- Salted anchoviesWhole salt-packed anchovies are still sold in tins and jars at Italian grocers and are worth seeking out. The two-hour cold-water soak is not optional: unsoaked, they are brutally salty, and the skin and backbone come away easily only once the fish has softened.
- "Bottled anchovies"In period usage this generally meant anchovies already prepared and packed in oil or brine, needing no soaking or boning; the recipe's method addresses only the salt-packed sort. Modern oil-packed tinned fillets are the nearest equivalent; drain them, blot on paper, and skip the soaking. Twelve fillets is roughly one 2 oz tin.
- The lemon juice mattersSqueezing lemon over the prepared flesh does more than season it; the acid balances the residual saltiness, and the recipe has you do it before assembly so the anchovy sits in it while you put the rest together.
- Hard-boiled eggsSlice them with a wet knife or an egg slicer so the yolks stay whole; broken yolks muddy the dressing. Cook the eggs so the yolk is just set through rather than chalky, about 10 minutes from boiling, then chill in cold water.
- Onion juiceA period technique: a halved onion pressed against a grater or squeezed in a cloth gives juice without pulp. A teaspoon is plenty for a cup of mayonnaise. Grated shallot works if you do not mind the flecks.
- Do not add saltNeither the dressing nor the salad wants any. Between the cured fish and a commercial mayonnaise there is more than enough, and sauce tartare with capers and pickle adds still more.
- AssemblyLeaves laid with stalk ends to the centre form a rosette that holds the egg and fish in place. Dress it at the moment of serving; lettuce under an oily dressing collapses within minutes.
- YieldThe recipe gives no number, but four eggs and a head of lettuce suggest about four as a first course, or two as a light lunch.
Anchovy in the late-Victorian larder was less a fish than a seasoning: anchovy paste, anchovy essence and Gentleman's Relish stood beside the Worcestershire sauce, and salted whole anchovies came from the Mediterranean in barrels to be soaked and boned at home. This salad belongs to the moment when American cookery schools were teaching the composed salad as a course in its own right, arranged on the dish rather than tumbled in a bowl, with the dressing offered separately or poured over at the last second. If the book is Janet McKenzie Hill's salad volume of 1899 -- she edited the Boston Cooking School Magazine -- that is precisely the audience it addresses. The pairing of salt-cured fish with hard-boiled egg is far older than the book and turns up across Europe, from Scandinavian herring plates to the Provencal salade nicoise, the egg yolk being the natural foil for a fish cured to the edge of edibility.