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Salted Anchovies
Place eighteen half-salted anchovies on the lightly moistened half of a clean towel; with the dry half of the towel neatly wipe the anchovies all over, then dress nicely on a hors d'oeuvre dish; dredge half a hard-boiled egg, finely chopped up, and half teaspoon of finely chopped parsley over them; decorate all round with parsley greens and a few very thin slices of lemon and serve.
An assembly job rather than a cooked dish, but the anchovies you can buy today are not quite the ones the original had in mind, and that changes the first step.
- "Half-salted" anchoviesThe term indicated a mildly cured fish, still soft and edible after nothing more than a wipe, as against fully salted stock; exactly how the milder cure was achieved is not spelled out. Salt-packed anchovies sold now are fully cured and aggressively salty.
- Wiping versus rinsingThe towel treatment only works on a lightly cured fish. Modern salt-packed anchovies should be rinsed under cold water, then soaked 20 to 30 minutes (in water, milk or wine) and patted dry, or the dish is inedibly salty.
- FilletingSalt-packed anchovies come whole. Open each along the belly with a thumb, lift out the spine and dorsal fin, and trim the tail. The small pin bones soften enough in the cure to be left in.
- If using oil-packed filletsThese are already filleted and desalted. Drain them well on paper and skip the soaking; they are far softer than the original and should be laid out rather than handled much.
- Dredge, in period usageHere it means to scatter or sprinkle over, not to coat in flour. Half a hard-boiled egg for eighteen anchovies is a light dusting, which is the intention.
- Hors d'oeuvre dishA shallow oval or compartmented relish dish. Any small flat plate works; the anchovies should lie in a single layer — rows or a lattice suit the recipe's instruction to dress them nicely — so the egg and parsley read against them.
- YieldEighteen anchovies serve four to six as one item on an hors d'oeuvre table. Serve with unsalted butter and bread, and dress with a little olive oil if the fish seem dry.
Salt-curing anchovies is one of the oldest surviving Mediterranean preservation methods, and layered in barrels the fish keep for a year or more without refrigeration — which is why they turn up as a reliable pantry item in cookbooks written before household iceboxes were universal. In the elaborate service of the period, a plate of anchovies like this belonged to the hors d'oeuvre course: a spread of small salted, pickled and marinated things set out before the soup, meant to be looked at as much as eaten, hence the instruction to dress them "nicely" and ring the plate with parsley and lemon. The chopped egg and parsley garnish is a common nineteenth-century finish for salted fish, and the same trio still appears on anchovy and herring plates from Nice to the Baltic. The distinction between fully salted and "half-salted" fish mattered to a cook buying from a barrel at the fish dealer's and has largely disappeared from retail language.