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Croûtes à la Bernadotte
Ingredients.
Three ounces of Anchovy Paste.
One tablespoonful of good Sauce.
One and a half Yolks of Eggs.
One ounce of Butter.
The book gives only the ingredients, as was common in savoury sections written for cooks who already knew the form. What follows fills in the assumptions rather than rewriting the dish.
- What a croûte is hereRounds or fingers of bread about a quarter-inch thick, fried in clarified butter or toasted and buttered, then drained. They should be crisp enough to stay so under a soft topping, and cut small — one or two mouthfuls each.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe yolks are there to bind and lightly set the paste. Work everything together cold, then warm it in a small pan over the gentlest heat, or in a bowl over hot water, stirring until it thickens to a spreading consistency. Direct heat or a boil will scramble the yolk and the mixture will break.
- "One tablespoonful of good Sauce"In a book of this date this most likely means a bottled proprietary sauce — Worcestershire, Harvey's or a mushroom ketchup. A tablespoonful of Worcestershire, or Worcestershire loosened with a little mushroom ketchup, is the closest modern reading.
- One and a half yolksPossibly the residue of a larger batch quantity being halved. Eggs of the period were often smaller than a modern large egg; one large yolk, or two small ones, is the practical equivalent. Judge by consistency rather than count.
- Anchovy pasteStill sold in tubes and much the same product, though modern versions vary in salt and in how much butter or vinegar they carry. Three ounces is a generous 85 g and will make the mixture very salty on its own — add no further salt, and taste before seasoning with cayenne, which is the usual finish for a savoury of this kind.
- Butter proportionOne ounce (30 g), softened, not melted, creamed into the paste. It is there to soften the salt and give the mixture body once it cools slightly on the croûte.
- Finishing and servingSpread the warm mixture on the croûtes and glaze for a minute under a hot grill or in a hot oven, only until the surface just sets and colours. Serve immediately; a savoury that has stood goes leathery and the croûte softens.
- YieldThe quantities cover roughly ten to twelve small croûtes — enough for a savoury course for six, at one or two apiece.
The savoury is a peculiarly British course: a small, hot, sharply seasoned mouthful served after the sweet and before dessert, and by the last quarter of the nineteenth century it had become a fashionable feature of ambitious dinners. Anchovy, cayenne, cheese and marrow did most of the work, always on a fried or toasted base, and always in a portion small enough not to compete with what had gone before. Names like a were largely honorific — Napoleon's marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was elected heir to the Swedish throne in 1810 and acceded as Charles XIV John in 1818, founding the dynasty — and in professional cookery of this period such titles rarely carried a fixed set of ingredients. They signalled a house version or a compliment to a patron rather than a defined garnish. The bare ingredient list is itself characteristic: books of "high-class" recipes were written for trained kitchen staff who needed proportions, not procedure.