To Keep Anchovies When the Liquor Dries
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Salt the sprats well and let the salt drain from them for 24 hours.
Wipe the sprats dry, but do not wash them.
Pack and store
Mix the common salt, coarse sea salt, saltpetre, sal prunel, and cochineal in a fine powder.
Sprinkle the mixture among the sprats and pack them into two stone jars.
Keep the jars in a cold place, sealed 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 whole fish being preserved; they are the main product that the cure acts on.
- Common salt
- Draws moisture out of the fish and preserves it by making the flesh unfavourable to spoilage microbes.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the colour of the fish and adds to the curing action of the salt mixture.
- Cochineal
- Adds a red colour to the preserved fish.
The step that matters
Wiping the sprats dry without washing them. Surface moisture and washing water dilute the salt and encourage spoilage, so the fish must be dried, not rinsed, before the cure goes on.
“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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