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Macaroni with Anchovy Sauce
(Maccheroni con salsa d'acciughe) After the paste is drained thoroughly it is to be put into the hot dish in which it is to be served and the anchovy sauce poured over it and well mixed with two silver forks until the sauce has gone all through it. Some olive oil may be added, but grated cheese is not generally used with the anchovy sauce. 18
This is a finishing method rather than a full recipe: it assumes you have already made the anchovy sauce given elsewhere in the book (the trailing "18" is a cross-reference in the original text, not a quantity). What matters here is the dressing of the pasta, not its cooking.
- "Paste" means pastaThroughout this book paste is the literal translation of pasta, and "macaroni" is used the older Italian way, for dried pasta in general. Spaghetti, bucatini or any tubular shape suits an anchovy sauce equally well.
- Heat the serving dish for realThe instruction to use a hot dish is the hinge of the method. An oil-and-anchovy sauce stiffens and separates on cool porcelain, and there is no pan heat here to rescue it. Warm the bowl with boiling water or a low oven and dry it before the pasta goes in.
- Silver forksSilver may have been named because base or iron flatware could react with salt fish and acid, though period books often specify silver simply as the ware of a well-set table. Modern stainless steel is inert and does the same job; the point is simply to toss rather than stir, lifting the strands so the sauce coats every one.
- Drained thoroughly, within reasonAnchovy sauce is oil-based and clings poorly to dry pasta. Drain so no water pools in the dish, but a tablespoon or two of the cooking water helps the oil emulsify into a coating rather than a slick. Do not rinse.
- Salt the water lightlySalt-packed or oil-packed anchovies are the salt in this dish. Season the cooking water more sparingly than usual and taste before adding any more.
- The anchoviesSalt-packed anchovies were common in Italy at the time, though tinned oil-packed fillets were also available; salt-packed must be rinsed and filleted before use, while oil-packed fillets can go in as they are. Either way they should melt into warm oil over gentle heat and never fry, or they turn bitter and grainy.
- No cheese, and whyThe prohibition on grated cheese with fish sauces is a genuine Italian convention rather than a printer's whim, and it holds up on the palate: aged grating cheese competes with the anchovy's own savor. Toasted breadcrumbs give the same textural contrast if you want one.
- QuantityThe original gives none. Reckon 3 to 4 oz dried pasta per person, with roughly 4 to 6 anchovy fillets and a quarter cup of oil for every pound of pasta.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was published in New York for American readers. Anchovy sauce belongs to an older southern repertoire of store-cupboard dressings built on preserved fish, oil and garlic, of a piece with pasta dressed with colatura, with sardines, or with the bread-crumb toppings of Sicily and Campania. Such dishes were also common Lenten and Friday fare, which may be one reason a book of this period treats a fish sauce as an everyday matter rather than a specialty. The instruction to omit cheese, still repeated in Italian kitchens today, is generally traced to that same regional tradition rather than to any single written rule.