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Livournaise Sauce
To a cup of mayonnaise dressing add a grating of nutmeg, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley and the pulp of eight anchovies.
To prepare the anchovies, wash, dry, remove skin and bones and pound to a pulp in a mortar.
A compound mayonnaise of the classic French pattern, meant to be made and used the same day. The whole dish turns on how much salt the anchovies carry, so taste before you add any of your own.
- What eight anchovies meansThe instruction to wash, skin and bone the fish points to salt-packed whole anchovies, which were commonly sold that way in this period alongside tinned fillets. Eight whole fish give sixteen fillets and perhaps 2 tablespoons of pulp. Oil-packed fillets from a tin are already skinned and largely boned: use 14 to 16 of them, drained, or start with about 1 tablespoon of anchovy paste and work up.
- Rinse, and hold the saltSalt-packed anchovies can carry enough salt to wreck a cup of dressing. Rinse and pat dry as directed even if you are using tinned fillets, and season the finished sauce only after the pulp is in.
- The mortarA mortar breaks the fish down to a smooth paste that disperses through the mayonnaise instead of sitting in threads. A mini food processor does the same job; failing that, mash the fillets against a board with the flat of a knife until no fibres remain.
- Nutmeg"A grating" is small — about an eighth of a teaspoon from a whole nutmeg, less if the mayonnaise is already sharp with mustard. Pre-ground nutmeg has lost most of what makes this worth doing.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both work; chop it fine and dry so it disperses rather than clumping.
- The mayonnaise baseA cup of homemade mayonnaise here is uncooked egg yolk. If you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs or a good bottled mayonnaise. Either way, refrigerate and use within a day or two.
- Yield and servingAbout 1 1/4 cups, enough for six to eight. The recipe names no accompaniment; a sauce of this kind suits cold fish, hard-boiled eggs, cold veal and shellfish salads better than green leaves, where it overwhelms.
The name points to Livorno, the Tuscan port the English long called Leghorn, a significant Mediterranean trading port. French kitchens attached à la livournaise to dishes carrying an anchovy character, and in classical French practice sauce livournaise is usually described as a cold anchovy sauce built on sieved hard-boiled egg yolk with mustard, nutmeg and parsley, mounted with oil in the manner of a mayonnaise; the version here starts from mayonnaise already made. Compound mayonnaises of this sort are common in books of salads, sandwiches and chafing-dish cookery from around 1900, when salted and tinned anchovies were among the strong savoury flavourings a household could keep on hand.