Gentleman’s Relish
Sometimes simplicity is best. Take hot, buttered toast. The joy that it can bring was wonderfully encapsulated in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908), where a plate “piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb” sent Toad into ecstasy, evoking images “of warm kitchens, of breakfast on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings…”
For some of us buttered toast does not cut the mustard, lacking that oh so essential hit of umami bringing every taste bud and salivary gland to life that only an additional coating of the Gentleman’s Relish can provide. At first glance, it is not overly appealing, a sludgy brownish-grey paste with a pungent, overpowering fishy smell. Anchovies make up around 60% of its content, putting it firmly in the tradition of fermented fish sauces like garum, the ketchup of the Roman world.
Always judge a foodstuff by its taste, though, and once spread lightly over toast its surprisingly delicate, delicious, saline taste screams of sophistication. It was eaten by James Bond in For Your Eyes Only (1981), named as one of the ten foods that Nigella Lawson could not live without, and chosen as her one luxury item by the writer, Jessica Mitford, on Desert Island Discs in 1977.
The sight and smell of it, though, are too overwhelming for some while the anchovies and high sodium content puts it out of bounds for those following plant-based diets or with health conditions such as high blood pressure. To protect the unwary, the Gentleman’s Relish is kept under wraps, sealed under foil in a low, opaque, white, plastic, capstan-like container, adding to its mystique.
Opinion is divided as to when is the best time to eat it. Admiral Sir Sydney Smith, an early advocate of the Gentleman’s Relish, described it in a note as “the most delicious breakfast-table accompaniment” he had yet tasted. For Freya, in Poppy Alexander’s The 12 Days of Christmas (2021), the sight of pots of it in a delicatessen reminded her of afternoons sitting in the cosy cottage kitchen in front of the Aga with her mother, “having round after round of hot buttered toast with the salty, anchovy paste scraped sparingly on top of the pools of melted butter”.
However, the Gentleman’s Relish came into its own as an essential component of a 19th century dinner party. Consisting of course after course of rich foods, washed down with copious amounts of alcohol, so over-facing were they that by the time the sweet course had been cleared away, the palate of even the most experienced trencherman had been beaten into submission.
Served after the dessert and before coffee, the savoury course, usually a small, incredibly salty dish, was designed to shock the gastric juices into action and, because of its salinity, encourage the diners to slake their thirst once more. The Gentleman’s Relish was the ideal savoury dish being, as Mrs Beeton rather elegantly put it in her Book of Household Management (1861), “an excellent bonne bouche which enables gentlemen at wine-parties to enjoy their port with redoubled gusto”.
The Gentleman’s Relish was also a cooking ingredient, adding a hit of umami when mixed into the mince for a Shepherd’s Pie, used as a seasoning for stews, especially lamb, melted in with soft scrambled eggs or served with baked potatoes, potato cake, or croquettes. However, for sheer indulgence Scotch Woodcock takes some beating, toasted bread buttered with a layer of the Gentleman’s Relish, topped with buttery scrambled eggs and two anchovy fillets.
