Italian salsa verde

Overview

Italian salsa verde is a cold, rustic sauce of parsley, capers, anchovy, garlic and olive oil, sharpened with vinegar. Its texture ranges from a loose herb oil to a thick, creamy paste. Different regions and households add bread, egg or mustard, so the sauce is better understood as a family of preparations than as one recipe.

The sauce is a fresh preparation, not a fermentation. Its keeping quality depends on the oil, the herbs and the handling, which is the main point of interest for a cook.

Name and history

Green sauces of parsley and herbs were common in European cookery long before the modern Italian sauce. The Oxford Companion to Food, cited on the Green sauce article, says green sauce was certainly present in the Middle Ages and may date to the Classical period. Parsley and sage formed one of the most common medieval sauces, and a fourteenth-century recipe recommended a green sauce with cheese and egg yolks.

The Italian sauce is distinct from these medieval herb sauces. The Piedmontese bagnet verd, also called bagnetto verde, appears in a 1931 Touring Club Italiano guide alongside bollito misto, a boiled meat dish. That is the earliest dated Italian source the sources supply. A claim that the sauce is a nineteenth-century invention is not supported by a source and is not used here.

Ingredients and their roles

Parsley is the base and gives the sauce its colour and flavour. Anchovy and capers give salt and sharpness, and capers are desalted before use so that the sauce is not over-salted. Garlic gives pungency, and it is halved and its germ removed so the raw garlic is less harsh.

Bread soaked in vinegar is the thickener in the Piedmontese version. Soaking softens the crumb so that it blends into an emulsion, and squeezing it removes excess liquid. Egg yolk adds body in the bagnet verd. The Wikipedia entry notes that some regions use bread and others do not, but that regional claim is tagged as needing a citation.

Method

The parsley must be dry before blending. Wet leaves dilute the sauce and loosen the emulsion, and the source links dry leaves to a bright green colour. Everything except the oil and vinegar is blended first, then the oil is added to bring the sauce to a soft consistency. Traditionally the ingredients were chopped by hand; the modern food processor is a common substitute.

Eggs are boiled for about eight to nine minutes so the yolks are firm enough to blend. The bread is soaked in the vinegar rather than in water, so the acid goes into the sauce as well as the crumb.

Serving and variations

The sauce is served with boiled meats and bollito misto, with cold leftover meat, grilled fish, roasted vegetables and fresh cheese. In Piedmont the bagnet verd is named with bollito misto. Some cooks use basil or mint in place of part of the parsley. The Siena garlic version, agliata, is a different preparation with garlic as its main subject.

The egg-free version is lighter and sharper, and the bread can be omitted for a looser sauce. The modern egg-free and bread-free variants are adaptations, not the Piedmontese form.

Storage and safety

The source gives two to three days in the refrigerator, in a glass jar with the surface covered by olive oil. This is one recipe's figure and is not a validated shelf life. The sauce contains garlic and fresh herbs in oil, and such mixtures are a recognised botulism concern when they are held warm or at room temperature. The sources here set no acidity or time limit that makes room-temperature holding safe.

Unknowns

The origin date of the Piedmontese bagnet verd, the regional claims about bread, and the Ligurian and Tuscan versions are not established by the sources read here. A specialist Italian food-history source for these forms would be the next research step.