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SARDINES (a la Provencale)
Cut some neat fingers of toast, large enough to hold a sardine; butter them slightly. Wipe as many sardines as may be required, put one on each finger of toast, dish them up, on a round dish in the form of lattice work, and keep the dish in a hot oven long enough to get the sardines thoroughly hot. Have ready a sauce made as follows. Put three well-beaten eggs into a small saucepan, add a pat of butter, a table-spoonful of cream, a tea-spoonful of essence of anchovy, and a table-spoonful of finely-chopped boiled onions; season with pepper and salt; stir over a fire till it thickens, pour quickly over the dish of sardines, dust with a pinch of cayenne pepper, and serve.
A late-Victorian savoury: tinned sardines on toast under a thickened egg sauce. The hinge is the sauce, which is a custard and will scramble if you hurry it.
- The sauce is a custard, not a scrambleThree beaten eggs with cream and butter must be stirred over the gentlest heat, or in a bowl over simmering water, until they thicken to the consistency of pouring cream. The moment you see grain forming, pull the pan off the heat and keep stirring; there is no rescuing it once it sets.
- Essence of anchovyA bottled anchovy extract, thinner and saltier than paste, still sold in Britain as anchovy essence or anchovy sauce. A scant teaspoon of anchovy paste, or two mashed fillets, does the same job. Salt cautiously afterwards.
- "Wipe as many sardines"Almost certainly sardines packed in oil, which by this date usually meant tinned. Wiping removes the surface oil so it does not slick the toast. Drain well, then blot each fish on kitchen paper.
- A pat of butterRoughly 1 tablespoon, about 15 g.
- Oven heatThe recipe calls for a hot oven, but the sardines only need warming through; a moderate oven for five to eight minutes is enough. Any hotter and the toast dries out and the fish falls apart when the sauce hits it.
- Boiled onionsBoil a small onion until fully soft, then chop fine. Raw or barely cooked onion will taste harsh against the egg and gives the sauce a crunch it does not want.
- Assemble at the last minuteHave the toast fingers arranged and hot, the sauce just thickened, and serve immediately. Held even a few minutes, the toast goes soft and the sauce sets and weeps.
- YieldThe recipe fixes no quantity. Reckoning on a tin of four to six sardines, that is two to three as a light supper dish, or four to six as a small savoury course at the end of a meal.
Cassell's places this among the many small hot dishes served as a savoury, the course that came after the sweet at a British dinner and was meant to close the palate before dessert or port. Tinned sardines made that possible: cheap, well-flavoured fish packed in oil, largely from the Breton and Vendeen canneries, arrived in British grocers from the mid-nineteenth century and became a staple of the store cupboard, and sardines on toast in a dozen guises fills pages of Victorian cookery books. The label a la Provencale is doing loose duty here: tomato, garlic and olive oil are the usual markers of that name, and none appears. The dish is finished with an anchovy-sharpened egg sauce poured over at the table. The lattice arrangement on a round dish belongs to the same period taste for food built into a pattern before it left the kitchen.