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Croûtes of Bread (Cayenne Wash and bone)
Cayenne. Wash and bone the anchovies, pound them in a mortar with the hard-boiled yolks of eggs, butter and cayenne. Rub this through a hair-sieve.
Cut some rounds of bread with a cutter and fry them in boiling fat, spread them with the anchovy butter and sprinkle over them the whites of eggs chopped very finely. Serve either hot or cold.
A savoury of fried bread rounds under anchovy butter, printed here with its ingredient list truncated to the word "Cayenne" — the quantities have to be reconstructed from the method.
- Working proportionsFor about 12 croûtes: 8-10 salted anchovy fillets, the yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs, 4 oz (115 g) softened butter and cayenne to taste. The paste should be stiff enough to spread without running.
- AnchoviesThe recipe assumes whole salt-cured anchovies, which need rinsing and the backbone stripped out. Oil-packed tinned fillets are already boned; drain them and taste before adding salt anywhere else in the dish.
- Hair-sieveA fine-mesh drum sieve of horsehair, used to force pastes smooth. A fine stainless sieve does the same job, or simply work the mixture in a food processor and skip the sieving.
- Frying the bread"Boiling fat" here means fat hot enough to fry in, not fat literally at a boil; in modern terms that is conventionally around 350-375F (175-190C). Rounds cut from firm day-old bread, fairly thin, colour very quickly and can be drained on paper. The recipe allows serving hot or cold, so the bread need not be fully cooled unless you are assembling ahead.
- CayenneThe recipe gives no quantity; a pinch or so is the usual reading, the heat playing against the salt and fat. Add it a little at a time, and taste again after the butter has stood, as the heat can seem to build.
- Chopped whiteChop the reserved egg whites very fine and scatter them on just before serving, or they weep and dull the surface.
- ServingOne or two rounds a head as a savoury or with drinks. Assembled cold they hold an hour or so; the fried bread goes soft once spread, so butter them late.
Croûtes like these belong to the British savoury course — a small, salty, often anchovy-based bite served after the sweet and before dessert fruit at a late-Victorian and Edwardian dinner, a habit largely confined to Britain. Anchovy butter, the beurre d'anchois of the professional kitchen, was a standing preparation in such households: salted anchovies pounded with butter kept well and turned up on toast, on grilled steak and in sauces. The pounded yolk and finely chopped white here are doing decorative work of a kind the period liked, the sieved yellow paste set off by a snow of white, achieved by forcing a paste through a hair sieve. The truncated opening — a page beginning mid-ingredient with "Cayenne" — is a common artefact of these compilations.