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Anchovy Sauce
Two Yolks of Eggs hard boiled.
One ounce of Bloater Paste.
One ounce of Butter.
One tablespoonful of Velouté Sauce.
Olives. A little Lax, Cayenne. Gherkins. Take half a pound of puff paste; give it three consecutive turns; sprinkle the paste each turn with finely grated Parmesan cheese. Roll it out in two long slips about three inches wide and a quarter of an inch thick.
Mix the anchovy paste with sufficient anchovy sauce to form a smooth paste. Spread this evenly over one side of the paste, and cover with the other strip. Cut it into squares about two and a half inches across; place them on a baking-sheet sprinkled with water; prick the surface of them with a fork, and bake in a moderately heated oven to a nice light brown. When baked, put aside to cool.
In the meantime pound the following in a mortar: - Two hard-boiled yolks of eggs, one ounce of fresh butter, one ounce of bloater paste, a tablespoonful of Velouté or Béchamel sauce, and three stoned Spanish olives. Pass all through a fine sieve. Put into a small basin, and season with a little cayenne. Put this purée in a paper cornet; cut the point, and, using it as a forcer, form an ornamental border on the top of each tartine. Place half a stoned Spanish olive in the centre of each; curl a strip of preserved lax round each olive; strew a few shreds of pickled French gherkins round the olives; dish up, and serve as hors d'œuvre.
Despite the title, this is not a sauce but a pair of anchovy-filled puff pastry squares finished with a piped egg-and-fish butter. The header list and the method disagree in places, so read the method as authoritative.
- The title and the ingredient listThe heading and the short list at the top belong loosely to the dish; the method calls for anchovy paste and anchovy sauce that never appear in the list, and the puff paste and Parmesan are only named in the method. Assemble your shopping from the instructions, not the list.
- Oven heatThe recipe asks for a "moderately heated oven". Puff paste needs a fairly sharp initial heat to lift, so around 400-425F is a practical working figure; too low and the layers leak butter and the squares stay flat.
- Bloater paste and laxBloater paste is a potted spread of smoked, salted whole herring, still sold in small jars in Britain; anchovy paste is the nearest general substitute. "Lax" is the Scandinavian word for salmon, and "preserved lax" here means cured salmon, most likely smoked, cut into thin strips.
- Three consecutive turnsGive the paste three rolls and folds, cheese-dusted each time, chilling between if the butter softens. Grated Parmesan between the layers is the point of the pastry — use dry, finely grated cheese so it does not tear the sheets.
- The water on the baking sheetSprinkling the sheet with water creates steam under the pastry and helps it rise before the base sets. Docking with a fork keeps the sandwiched squares from ballooning apart.
- Velouté or BéchamelA single tablespoon of either is there to loosen the pounded mixture; a spoonful of thick white sauce or even crème fraîche does the same job. It must be cold before pounding or the butter will slacken and the piped border will slump.
- Paper cornetA cone rolled from paper, with the tip snipped off and used as a plain piping nozzle. Chill the pur hat its shape but pipe it before it hardens, and keep the finished tartines cool -- the border is essentially a butter mixture and will soften at room temperature.
- Yield and servingHalf a pound of puff paste rolled into two strips three inches wide and a quarter-inch thick will not go far; once the strips are sandwiched, expect only a few 2 1/2-inch squares. Assemble no more than an hour ahead or the pastry goes soft under the filling.
Late Victorian and Edwardian household books devote whole chapters to small savoury mouthfuls of exactly this kind: a crisp base, a strongly salted fish paste, and a piped ornament finished with olive, gherkin and smoked fish. They served the hors d'oeuvre course at the start of dinner and the savoury at its end, and the same recipes were often used for both. The reliance on bottled and potted goods -- bloater paste, anchovy sauce, Spanish olives, pickled French gherkins, "preserved lax" -- reflects a period when the grocer's shelf had become deep enough for a cook to build a dish almost entirely from prepared ingredients, and when smoked and salted fish were among the few reliably savoury flavourings available year round. Parmesan rolled into puff paste is a professional touch of the same era, of a piece with the cheese straws and cheese biscuits made from feuilletage.