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Anchovy Stuffing
Put some large, fine-chopped onions into a fryingpan with a little oil or butter, and fry them to a light brown. Put them in a basin and add some breadcrumbs that have been dipped in water and squeezed quite dry; then add a small piece of the liver of the bird to be stuffed, the fillets of seven or eight salted anchovies, a pinch of parsley, with a few chopped capers. Work these well together, sprinkle over a little pepper and thicken the mixture with the yolks of eggs, when it is ready for use.
A savory forcemeat stuffing of the sort Oscar's kitchen kept on hand for roast poultry and game birds. The original gives no quantities at all, so treat it as a ratio rather than a recipe.
- Working quantitiesFor a 4-5 lb bird, figure two medium onions, about 2 cups of soft breadcrumbs, the bird's liver, the fillets of the 7-8 anchovies called for (about 14-16 fillets), 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, 1 tablespoon capers and 2 egg yolks. That yields roughly 3 cups of stuffing.
- Salted anchoviesThese are whole salt-packed anchovies, still sold in tins and jars at Italian groceries. Rinse them, split them and lift out the backbone to get your fillets, and soak them 10 minutes if they taste harsh. Oil-packed fillets substitute directly: use about 14-16 of them (the fillets of 7-8 fish), drained and blotted.
- Add no saltEight anchovies plus capers is a great deal of salt already. The recipe seasons with pepper only, and that is deliberate.
- The breadcrumbs"Dipped in water and squeezed quite dry" means torn stale bread, not dry packaged crumbs, which turn to paste when wetted. Soak, then wring it out hard in your hands so the stuffing binds rather than slumps.
- The liverChop it very fine and raw; it cooks through inside the bird and gives the mixture its richness. If your bird came without giblets, a single chicken liver stands in.
- Egg yolks as the binder"Thicken with the yolks" means just enough to hold the mass together, one or two for the quantity above. Add them off the heat and after the onions have cooled, or they will scramble.
- Cook it throughStuffing containing raw liver and raw yolk needs to reach 165F at the center of the cavity. A stuffed bird's breast will often read done well before the stuffing does; check both, or bake the stuffing alongside in a dish.
- Frying the onions"Light brown" over moderate heat, not scorched. This is the only cooked element going in, and burnt onion will dominate the anchovy.
Oscar Tschirky, maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, compiled his 1896 cook book from the working practice of a large hotel kitchen, which is why entries like this one read as formulas for a cook who already knows the dish rather than as recipes for a home table. Anchovy stuffings belong to a long European habit of using salted fish as a background seasoning rather than a flavor in its own right, a use generally traced back through Renaissance cookery to the fermented fish sauces of the classical Mediterranean. In a nineteenth-century hotel larder salted anchovies turned up in butters, sauces, canapes and forcemeats, and here they appear alongside the liver of the bird being roasted.