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Eggs and Anchovies
Break nine eggs into a basin, beat them up with pepper, salt, and a very small piece of minced onion. Heat in a small enamelled saucepan one ounce of butter and a table-spoonful of milk, add the eggs, etc., to it, and stir till it thickens. Have ready some pieces of hot buttered toast, lay the mixture on top, and put a fillet of anchovy crosswise on each piece. Probable cost, 1s.
A savoury of soft scrambled egg on toast, finished with anchovy. The whole thing takes under ten minutes, and the only difficulty is not overcooking the eggs.
- The hinge: low heat, stop earlyNine eggs with only an ounce of butter and a tablespoon of milk will seize quickly. Keep the pan over gentle heat, stir constantly, and take it off while the curds still look slightly too loose — they carry on setting as you spoon them onto the toast.
- SaltAnchovy fillets are intensely salty, and the recipe already calls for salt in the eggs. Season the eggs lightly and let the fish do most of the work.
- Why enamelledCassell's calls for an enamelled pan, most likely because bare iron or unlined copper can discolour eggs and react with them. A modern nonstick or stainless pan does the same job; avoid untreated cast iron.
- The anchoviesAnchovies of the period were commonly sold salt-packed, to be rinsed and filleted before use, though bottled and potted preparations were also on sale. Oil-packed tinned fillets are the closest substitute — blot them, and rinse them briefly if they taste harsh.
- Onion"A very small piece of minced onion" means perhaps a teaspoon, raw, mixed into the beaten egg. It will barely cook through in a couple of minutes; mince it very fine, or soften it in the butter first if you dislike a raw bite.
- YieldNine eggs would stretch to roughly four generous servings as a light supper, or a larger number of small savoury toasts if served at the end of a meal in the original manner; the recipe itself only says 'some pieces of hot buttered toast'.
- "Probable cost, 1s."One shilling, an editorial habit of Cassell's rather than an instruction. It fixed the dish as everyday food in a period when eggs were reckoned by the dozen and priced seasonally.
This belongs to the English savoury — a small, salty, often anchovy-based dish served after the sweet course at dinner, a fashion at its height in the late nineteenth century when Cassell's was compiled. Anchovy in some form was a mainstay of that course: anchovy paste, anchovy essence, anchovy butter, and the potted anchovy relishes still sold today all did the same job of putting a sharp salt note on hot buttered toast. Salted fish and eggs had long been paired in English cookery, but presenting the mixture as a neat crossed fillet on a cut round of toast reads as a dining-room flourish of the savoury course rather than a breakfast dish.