Cut thin round slices of bread and toast them. Spread with chopped anchovies and chopped ham. Cover the top with whipped whites of eggs and place a raw yoke on each slice of bread. Set in the oven to bake long enough to heat the egg, and serve at once.
July 27 — No. 27
Belgian
A savoury toast under a meringue of egg white with the yolk set into the top. The whole thing works only if the whites are whipped stiff and hollowed so the yolk sits in a nest rather than sliding off.
- The hinge: build a nestWhip the whites to firm, dry peaks and mound them on the toast, then make a depression in the centre with the back of a spoon before sliding the yolk in. A flat cap of foam will not hold the yolk, and a loose foam will weep salty liquid into the bread.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. A moderate oven, 350F, for five to seven minutes is right: long enough to set the outside of the meringue and warm the yolk through, not long enough to brown the foam to brittleness.
- The yolk stays soft"Long enough to heat the egg" means a warm, runny yolk, which is the point of the dish. If that is not wanted, or if the eggs are being served to anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurised shell eggs; they whip a little more slowly but behave otherwise.
- AnchoviesSalt-packed anchovies are saltier than oil-packed fillets; rinse and dry salt-packed ones, and chop whichever you use very fine so the paste spreads thinly.
- HamPresumably cooked ham, chopped small; the recipe does not specify. Between the anchovy and the ham the toast carries all the salt the dish needs; add none to the whites.
- The toastCut the rounds from a firm white loaf about a third of an inch thick and toast them dry and crisp on both sides. Soft or fresh bread collapses under the wet foam.
- YieldOne slice per egg. Three or four rounds make a light supper for one; two rounds serve as a first course. Assemble and bake at the last minute, as the meringue begins to slump within a few minutes of leaving the oven.
This belongs to a family of late nineteenth and early twentieth century savouries in which stiffly beaten whites are used as a hot garnish rather than a sweet one, the yolk dropped back in to cook in its own hollow. The Belgian attribution here is loose, as it often is in this kind of book, which belongs to the daily-dish calendar genre popular in American households around 1900, where a national label was a way of ringing changes on a year of menus more than a claim of provenance. What is genuinely of its period is the form ound of toast, served at the end of dinner or at a late supper, and built from the anchovy paste and cold ham that a well-stocked larder was expected to have on hand.