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Canapés à la Fife
Croûtes of fried bread. Lay upon each croûte two fillets of anchovy, season with pepper and salt, and drop over each fillet a little whipped cream.
Dish up on a napkin.
A savoury from the era when a small salty bite closed a formal dinner. There is nothing to cook but the bread, so everything depends on assembly and timing.
- CroûtesCut crustless white bread about 1/4 inch thick into rounds or small rectangles roughly 1.5-2 inches across, and fry in clarified butter or a mix of butter and oil until crisp and pale gold on both sides. Drain on paper and cool completely; a warm croûte will collapse the cream.
- AnchoviesOil-packed fillets are the simplest modern choice. If you use salt-packed anchovies, rinse and fillet them and soak briefly in milk or water, or the canapé will be inedibly salty.
- Hold back the saltTwo anchovy fillets per croûte already carry a great deal of salt. Season with pepper, taste one assembled canapé, and add salt only if it genuinely needs it.
- The creamUnsweetened double or heavy cream, whipped only to soft peaks so it can be dropped from a teaspoon and still hold its shape. Over-whipped cream turns grainy and buttery against the fish.
- Assemble lastThis is the hinge: fried bread goes soggy under cream within minutes. Fry the croûtes ahead, keep the anchovies and whipped cream cold and separate, and put the three together immediately before serving.
- Optional finishCayenne is a common finish on savouries of this type, and a little chopped parsley would add colour. The original leaves it plain, which is also correct.
- Dishing up"Dish up on a napkin" means a folded linen napkin laid on the serving dish, which stops the croûtes sliding and absorbs any frying butter. A paper doily or plain plate does the same job.
- YieldReckon two croûtes per person as a savoury course. A 2 oz tin of anchovy fillets holds roughly ten to twelve fillets, enough for five or six croûtes at two apiece.
The savoury was a fixture of late Victorian and Edwardian dinners in Britain, a hot, salty, often anchovy-based mouthful served after the sweet and before or alongside dessert fruit, and it was said to prepare the palate for the wine that followed. Anchovy in some form did the heavy lifting across the whole category, from anchovy toast to Scotch woodcock, because it delivered concentrated savour in a bite small enough not to compete with what had come before. Names like "à la Fife" belong to the same era's habit of attaching aristocratic titles and place names to small dishes; the Dukedom of Fife was created in 1889 and the county lies across the Forth from Edinburgh, but the specific connection here is not documented and the label is best read as decoration rather than provenance. The pairing of cold whipped cream with salt fish on fried bread is characteristic of the period's taste for sharp contrasts of temperature and seasoning in miniature.