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Cheese, Devilled, on Toast
Butter some square pieces of toast, spread them with anchovy paste, and over that grate some cheese thickly, season with cayenne, and salt, and bake in a sharp oven for eight minutes. Probable cost, 6d.
A savoury in the old sense: a small hot bite served at the end of dinner rather than the start. Nothing here is difficult, but the oven heat and the choice of cheese decide whether it comes out crisp or greasy.
- "A sharp oven"Sharp belongs to the same register as quick or brisk: a hot oven. The book gives no figures, so any modern equivalent is an approximation; a hot oven should melt and blister the cheese in eight minutes without drying the toast to a biscuit.
- Grill instead, if you preferUnder a hot broiler the same thing happens in two to three minutes. Watch it, as the anchovy and cayenne scorch quickly.
- CheeseGrate it thickly, as instructed, and use a firm dry cheese — a mature Cheddar, Cheshire or Gloucester. Young or high-moisture cheeses slump and weep oil rather than browning.
- Anchovy pasteSold today as anchovy paste in a tube, or Gentleman's Relish, which is the spiced version of the same thing. A thin scrape is plenty; it is salty enough to carry the whole dish.
- SaltThe recipe calls for salt, but between anchovy paste and mature cheese there is a great deal already. Taste before adding any.
- Cayenne"Devilled" in Victorian usage means hot and sharply seasoned, not merely spiced. A generous pinch is intended, but cayenne varies in strength — start light.
- ToastToast the bread dry and firm first so it can take the butter without going limp. The recipe specifies only square pieces; the size, and whether to trim the crusts, are left to the cook.
- YieldReckon one or two squares per person as a savoury course, or three or four as a light supper dish. The "probable cost, 6d" is Cassell's standard note of household expense and gives no clue to quantity.
Devilled cheese on toast belongs to the Victorian and Edwardian savoury, the short hot course that came after the sweet and before the dessert fruit at a formal English dinner — a convention largely confined to Britain and often explained as something served for the gentlemen with their wine. "To devil" had meant to season fiercely with cayenne, mustard and other hot condiments since at least the early nineteenth century, and it was applied to kidneys, bones, biscuits and, as here, cheese. The anchovy underneath is the same instinct that produced Gentleman's Relish: a concentrated salt-and-fish note that Victorian cooks used the way we use Worcestershire sauce or soy. Cassell's cookery dictionaries, compiled for middle-class households, carry many of these small toasted savouries, each with its note of probable cost.