To Make Sprats Taste Like Anchovies
Ingredients
Directions
Salt the sprats
Salt the sprats well and let the salt drain for 24 hours.
Wipe the sprats dry without washing them.
Pack and store
Mix the common salt, hay-salt, saltpetre, sal-prunella, and cochineal in a fine powder.
Sprinkle the mixture among the sprats and pack them in two stone jars.
Keep the jars in a cold place and seal them with a bladder.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Sprats
- The small fish being cured; they form the body of the finished dish.
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the fish and preserves it through curing.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the fish and gives it a firm, cured character.
- Cochineal
- Adds a red colour to the cured fish.
The step that matters
Wipe the sprats dry without washing them. Washing would add water back to the fish and dilute the salt coating, while residual moisture on the surface can slow curing and encourage spoilage. Drying the surface lets the salt mixture adhere and cure the fish properly.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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