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Toast, Savoury
Scale and bone two or three anchovies without washing them. Beat them to a paste, and add a pinch of cayenne or a little dry mustard and a small lump of butter. Toast a slice of brown bread, and butter it well. Spread the savoury paste upon it, and push it into the oven, or let it stand before the fire for a minute or two till it is very hot. Serve immediately. If liked, the yolk of an egg and a table-spoonful of cream may be mixed with the pounded anchovies, and the paste may be stirred over the fire for a short time till it is very hot without boiling.
A late-Victorian anchovy toast, the ancestor of both Gentleman's Relish and the modern anchovy butter. It takes about ten minutes and lives or dies on the salt balance.
- Which anchovies"Scale and bone" tells you the original meant whole salt-packed anchovies, which still come in tins and need the salt rinsed off despite the instruction not to wash them. Oil-packed fillets work directly: four to six fillets, drained and patted dry, stand in for two or three whole fish.
- Do not add saltSalt-cured anchovies carry all the seasoning the paste needs. Taste before you consider adding anything beyond the cayenne or mustard.
- Beating to a pasteA mortar gives the smoothest result, but the flat of a knife on a board works, and a small food processor works fastest. Mash the anchovy first, then work in softened butter so the fat does not seize around unbroken fibres.
- How much butter"A small lump" is not quantified; something in the region of half an ounce to an ounce (15-30 g) for two or three anchovies gives a spreadable paste. Adjust to taste: too little and the salt dominates, too much and it runs off the toast.
- Oven heatThe original specifies no temperature, only the oven or the open fire. In a modern oven a hot setting, around 400-425F, for two or three minutes will do: this is reheating, not baking, and the point is to melt the butter into the crumb without drying the bread to a cracker.
- The egg-and-cream versionThat variation is a stovetop custard, and the phrase "without boiling" is the hinge. Keep the pan low or use a bowl over hot water and stir constantly; once it approaches a simmer the yolk scrambles and the paste turns grainy.
- The bread"Brown bread" here means a wholemeal loaf, not a sweetened American brown bread. Cut it thin, toast it firm on both sides, and butter it while hot so it does not go leathery under the paste.
- YieldAs written this makes one slice, enough for one savoury course or two small fingers of toast. The paste scales up easily and keeps a few days covered in the refrigerator, though it firms up and wants ten minutes at room temperature before spreading.
This belongs to the savoury, the small hot salty course that closed a formal English dinner after the sweets and before the dessert fruit, a habit peculiar enough to British dining that it was often noted as a national eccentricity. Anchovy was the reigning flavour of that course: cheap, intensely saline, and shelf-stable in an era before refrigeration, it turned up as paste, as essence, in sauces and pounded into butter. The recipe here is given plain, with an "If liked" variation enriched with yolk and cream. Commercial anchovy pastes were already on sale in Britain when this was printed, so a household making its own was choosing control over convenience rather than doing something unavoidable.