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Cayenne and Salt (Eight fried Cro tes)
Eight fried Croûtes.
Stone the olives. Pound the butter, anchovy paste, yolks of eggs, chutney, and seasoning in a mortar. Then rub them through a sieve. Place a little of the mixture on each croûte, put a stoned olive on each, fill with the rest of the mixture through a forcing-bag. Decorate with coral and chopped white of egg. Curl an anchovy fillet round the base of each olive, dish up on little glass dishes, garnish with parsley and serve.
A cold-topped hot croûte from the savoury course, written for a cook who already knows the proportions. No quantities are given, so the balance is yours to set.
- CroûtesRounds or fingers of stale white bread about 1/4 inch thick and 1 1/2 inches across, fried in clarified butter until golden and drained on paper. Fry them well ahead and let them cool completely; a warm croûte will melt the butter mixture.
- Working quantitiesNo amounts are given. As a starting point for eight croûtes: 3 oz (85 g) softened butter, 2 hard-boiled egg yolks, 1 teaspoon anchovy paste, 1 teaspoon mango chutney chopped fine, and cayenne and salt to taste. 'Cayenne and salt' appears here as the last line of the ingredients rather than as a dish name, so how assertive the cayenne should be is left to the cook.
- SievingPounding in a mortar and then passing through a fine sieve exists to get rid of the graininess of cooked yolk. A food processor gets close, but the sieve step is still what makes the paste smooth enough to pipe cleanly.
- Forcing-bagA piping bag; the recipe names no tube, and a small star tube suits the ridged finish. Chill the paste until it is firm but not hard; butter warmed by handling will slump and lose its ridges.
- CoralThe dark roe of a hen lobster, cooked until it turns scarlet, dried and rubbed through a sieve to a bright powder. It was a standard garnish colour in Edwardian kitchens and is now hard to source; sieved cooked egg yolk or a dusting of paprika gives the colour without the flavour.
- Anchovy filletsSalt-cured fillets in oil, rinsed and blotted. Cut each fillet lengthwise into a thin strip so it will curl around the olive base without overwhelming it.
- ServingEight pieces serve four as a savoury or eight as a single bite with drinks. Assemble within an hour of serving so the croûtes stay crisp, and keep them cool rather than refrigerated hard.
This belongs to the savoury course, a peculiarly British stage of the late-Victorian and Edwardian dinner that came after the sweet and before dessert fruit, and which is conventionally explained as existing to leave a salt, sharp taste in the mouth for the wine that followed. Anchovy, cayenne, hard-boiled egg and fried bread are its basic vocabulary, recombined endlessly under names like Canapés Diane, Scotch woodcock and Anchovy toast; the title here simply advertises the seasoning that defines it. The chutney is a small marker of empire in the household kitchen, by 1900 an ordinary storecupboard item rather than an exotic one. Note that this recipe gives no quantities at all, the printed page apparently serving as an aide-mémoire for assembly and garnish rather than a full set of instructions.