Home › The Principles of Cookery › Empress Toasts
Empress Toasts
Fry some small rounds of bread in hot lard until of a golden colour, and spread with the following mixture. Pound the meat from the claw of one large lobster, with two boned anchovies, one ounce of butter, and one table-spoonful of lemon-juice till quite smooth, and arrange neatly on the croutons. Sprinkle a little cayenne pepper over, and make quite hot in the oven. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
A late-Victorian savoury: fried croutons under a pounded lobster-and-anchovy butter, warmed through and served hot. It comes together in about twenty minutes if the lobster is already cooked.
- The lobster must be cookedThe recipe assumes a boiled lobster. Claw meat from one large lobster is roughly 3-4 oz; a whole cooked lobster tail plus claws, or good picked lobster meat, will do.
- Boned anchoviesThese are salt-cured anchovies, which came whole and needed the spine pulled out. Two modern oil-packed fillets are equivalent, and the mixture will need no added salt; the recipe's cayenne is added separately at the end.
- Pound it properlyThe hinge of the dish is texture. Work the lobster, anchovy, butter and lemon juice to a genuinely smooth paste in a mortar or a small food processor; a lumpy spread will not hold on the croutons and the anchovy will taste raw in patches.
- Frying in lardLard was a common frying fat and gives a clean, crisp crumb. Clarified butter or a neutral oil works; the bread should be a golden colour, as the recipe says, and is best drained before spreading.
- Oven heat and time"Make quite hot" means warmed through only, not baked. The book gives no temperature or time; a few minutes in a moderately hot oven (around 375F) is enough. Longer and the butter runs off and the lobster tightens.
- CroutonsThe recipe says only "small rounds of bread". Rounds of about 1.5 in across and 1/3 in thick, cut from firm white bread, suit the topping and stay crisp.
- YieldThe book gives no yield. One lobster's claw meat should spread roughly a dozen small rounds, enough for four to six as a savoury or with drinks.
- Cost note"Probable cost, 2s. 6d." is the book's own housekeeping figure and carries no cooking instruction.
Small hot savouries like this belong to the closing course of a Victorian and Edwardian dinner, served after the sweet and before dessert fruit. Names honouring royalty and nobility were the standard way of dressing up a simple preparation on a menu card, and "Empress" here signals nothing more than lobster and a good deal of butter. The pounded shellfish butter itself is an older economy, or so it is usually explained: claw meat, harder to serve whole than the tail, was worked with butter and a salty accent so that little went to waste, the same logic often credited to potted shrimps and anchovy paste.