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Bread for Croûtes (Cayenne or Nepaul Pepper)
Cayenne or Nepaul Pepper.
Three ounces of Caviare. One ounce of sweet Almonds (blanched and peeled). One Lemon. Half an ounce of Butter.
Cut the bread into slices about half inch thick, stamp out some rounds three-quarters of an inch in diameter, scoop out the centre, and fry in clarified butter or lard till a golden colour.
Shred the almonds, put them on a baking-sheet and bake them to a fawny colour. Mix the caviare with the juice of the lemon (using a wooden fork or spoon), add the almonds and a pinch of cayenne. Mix the butter with a little red pepper to give it a bright colour, spread it on a plate, and put it on the ice.
Fill the croûtes with the prepared caviare, stamp out some little stars, and place one on each croûte. When required for table, put in a hot oven for six minutes to get hot through. Dish up, garnish with slices of lemon and parsley, and serve.
Croûtes d'Écrevisses à la Ravigotte. (Croûtes of Prawns.) Ingredients.
This page has come down to us mangled: the ingredient list survives only as its tail end ("Cayenne or Nepaul Pepper. Half an ounce of Butter"), and the last line belongs to the following recipe. The method is complete enough to work from, but you are supplying the quantities yourself.
- What is missingThe method calls for bread, clarified butter or lard, caviare, lemon juice, almonds, cayenne and butter. For twelve croûtes, reckon on about 2 oz caviare, a tablespoon of blanched almonds, the juice of half a lemon, and the half ounce of butter for the stars.
- Nepaul pepperA Victorian name for a hot red pepper associated with Nepal, sold alongside cayenne and used in the same way. Ordinary cayenne is the nearest substitute.
- The size of the roundsThree-quarters of an inch is very small for a case that is to be scooped out and filled; the figure may be a misprint, or may refer to the cutter used for the centre. If you want a workable case, cut rounds of about 1½ inches from half-inch bread and hollow them, leaving a thin base and wall.
- Wooden fork, and whyThe instruction is not fussiness. Caviare is traditionally kept away from steel and silver, which are said to give it a metallic taint, and the eggs crush under a tined metal fork. Wood or horn, and a light hand.
- Frying the casesClarified butter or lard at about 350F. Whole butter will burn before the crumb colours. Drain the cases upside down on paper so the hollows do not pool fat.
- Toasting the almondsShredded almonds go from fawn to bitter in a minute or two. 350F, on a single layer, checked at three minutes and stirred.
- The butter starsThe butter is coloured with paprika or cayenne, spread thin on a plate, chilled hard, then stamped. "Put it on the ice" means the icebox; twenty minutes in the refrigerator or five in the freezer does it.
- Six minutes in a hot ovenA hot oven here is 425-450F, and six minutes is the outer limit. Heated caviare turns grainy and oily, so the aim is a warm case with barely warmed filling. Serve immediately: the butter star should be melting as it reaches the table.
- YieldTreat these as one or two per person in a savoury or hors d'oeuvre course, not as a main dish.
Croûtes belong to the savoury, the small hot salted course that came after the sweet at a late-Victorian and Edwardian dinner and before the dessert fruit — a peculiarly British slot in an otherwise French menu, which is why books of this period are thick with anchovy, cheese, roe and caviare on fried bread. The fried hollowed case, a croûte or croustade, was the standard vehicle: it could be cut, fried and held, then filled and flashed through the oven when the bell rang, which suited a kitchen serving a long dinner. Caviare reached British tables largely through the Russian sturgeon fisheries and, being expensive and imported, marked a household out; the pairing with lemon, cayenne and toasted almonds reads as a Victorian treatment rather than a Russian one. "Nepaul pepper" is a reminder of how much of the spice cupboard in these books carried the name of a place associated with the trade in it.