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Eggs, Devilled
Cut four hard-boiled eggs into halves, remove the yolks without breaking the whites; mix the yolks with a tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce, a little cayenne pepper and salt, and fill the white-cups with it; set them to stand on a dish by cutting off the pointed tip, surround them with small cress and finely-cut lettuce. Time, fifteen minutes to boil eggs.
A short late-Victorian savoury that survives almost unchanged as the modern stuffed egg. Two things in the original need adjusting: the boiling time, and the assumption that anchovy sauce sits in every larder.
- Fifteen minutes is too longFifteen minutes gives a chalky yolk and a green-grey ring where sulphur meets iron at the yolk surface. Nine to eleven minutes off a gentle boil, then straight into cold water, gives a firm yolk that still mashes smooth.
- Cut them crosswiseThe instruction to make them stand "by cutting off the pointed tip" reads most easily if the eggs are halved across the middle rather than lengthwise. Trim a thin slice from the narrow end so the half sits upright, and reserve the trimmings for the filling.
- Anchovy sauceThis is the thin bottled anchovy condiment of the period, not the fillets. A quarter-teaspoon of anchovy paste or two mashed oil-packed fillets per four yolks is a fair equivalent; a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, which is anchovy-based, will also do.
- Loosen the fillingFour yolks with only a teaspoon of sauce make a stiff, crumbly paste. A teaspoon of softened butter, cream or mayonnaise brings it to piping consistency without altering the flavour the recipe intends.
- What "devilled" means hereThe heat comes from cayenne alone, so it is worth adding it gradually and tasting. The anchovy is already salty, so salt last.
- Small cressMustard-and-cress, sold in the period as seedling greens cut young. Garden cress, watercress leaves or pea shoots stand in; the point is a peppery green bed rather than a garnish.
- YieldEight halves, enough for four as a savoury course or light first course. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead and keep chilled; the whites weep if they stand overnight.
Devilled dishes belong to the British savoury course, the small hot or highly seasoned plate served after the sweet in nineteenth-century dinners. "To devil" had meant to season sharply with mustard, cayenne or pepper since at least the early 1800s, and it was applied freely to bones, kidneys, biscuits and eggs. Anchovy sauce, the other half of the seasoning here, was one of the standard bottled relishes of the Victorian store cupboard, and anchovy also figures in Worcestershire sauce. Stuffed hard-boiled eggs of this kind belong to the same broad tradition as the American deviled egg, which is made with mustard and mayonnaise rather than anchovy.