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Anchovy Paste
a Line a dozen small dariole moulds with very thin ordinary paste; meit the butter in a stewpan, add half an ounce of cornflour, then the milk; let it boil up, remove from the fire, add the cheese, and mix with two beaten eggs, season with little salt, and highly with cayenne; half fill the moulds with this preparation; put a small quantity of bloater or anchovy paste in the centre of each, cover with the remaining mixture, sprinkle the surface with grated cheese, bake in a moderate oven a light brown, turn out, and serve quickly on a folded napkin.
Éclaires d'Anchois. (Anchovy Éclaires.) Ingredients.
A hot cheese savoury baked in small moulds with a hidden core of anchovy or bloater paste, meant for the savoury course at the end of dinner. The method survives intact; several of the quantities do not.
- Unstated quantitiesOnly the cornflour (half an ounce, about 2 tablespoons) and the two eggs are given a measure. The butter, milk and cheese are referred to as though already listed, so the proportions of the base are not recoverable from this text and will have to be judged by the cook.
- What the base isButter, cornflour and milk boiled up together make a thick panada; the cheese and beaten eggs turn it into a soft baked custard rather than a sauce. It must be thick enough to hold the paste filling suspended in the centre of the mould.
- Dariole mouldsSmall tapered metal moulds of roughly 2 to 3 fl oz. Deep muffin tins or individual foil moulds of similar capacity behave the same way; you want a dozen.
- "Ordinary paste"In a book of this period this means plain shortcrust rather than puff or a sweetened paste. Roll it thin, since these are one- or two-bite savouries.
- Bloater pasteBloater is lightly salted, cold-smoked herring, and the potted paste was a standard grocery item in Britain. Anchovy paste from a tube is the easiest modern substitute; both are very salty, which is why the batter itself takes only a little salt.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as somewhere around 350F. Small moulds of this size will likely want in the region of 15 to 25 minutes, until the pastry is set and the cheese surface is light brown; watch them rather than trusting a time.
- Turning outLet the moulds stand a minute before unmoulding or the soft centre will break the pastry. The folded napkin is the conventional service for small hot savouries of this kind; it is often said to absorb steam and keep the darioles from sliding on the dish.
- Yield and servingTwelve small darioles; one or two each depending on whether they are served as a savoury or as a first course. They are at their best straight from the oven, which is presumably why the recipe insists on serving quickly.
Savouries like this belong to the late Victorian and Edwardian dinner, where a small hot, sharply seasoned dish was served after the sweet and before dessert, chiefly in British practice rather than French. Anchovy in paste form was one of the flavours associated with that course, though hardly its signature: potted fish pastes were sold ready-made by grocers from the early nineteenth century onward, the best known being the spiced anchovy relish generally traced to a London firm in the 1820s, and bloater paste was its cheaper herring cousin. Anchovy also did duty as the period's all-purpose savoury seasoning, standing in for the concentrated umami that cooks now reach for in stock cubes or soy. Pairing it with cheese and cayenne, hidden inside a pastry case so the salt arrives as a surprise in the middle, is exactly the kind of small architectural trick that kitchens of the day used to make a dozen identical mouthfuls at speed.