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Half a Lemon (Quarter of a teaspoonful)
Bread for Croûtes. Three ounces of Russian Caviare. Quarter of a teaspoonful of Shalots.
A pinch of Cayenne.
Clarified Butter for frying.
Parsley for garnishing.
Cut out eight round pieces of bread about an inch in diameter and half an inch thick; scoop out the centre sufficiently hollow to receive a dessertspoonful of caviare.
Mix the caviare carefully with a teaspoonful of chopped shalots, a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch of cayenne; fry the croûtes in hot butter a nice light colour, drain well on a cloth; when cold, fill up with the prepared caviare. Dish up. Garnish with sprigs of parsley, and serve.
Be careful never to touch caviare with a knife or any metal spoon, as it injures the flavour.
A caviare croûte from the savoury course, printed here with its ingredient list truncated into the title. Read the heading as part of the ingredients: half a lemon, a quarter-teaspoonful of shallots, cayenne, clarified butter, parsley.
- The shallot amount contradicts itselfThe heading calls for a quarter-teaspoonful of shallots, the method for a teaspoonful. Start with the smaller amount — raw shallot is assertive against caviare, and you can add more.
- Croûtes, not toastAn inch across and half an inch thick, hollowed like a tiny vol-au-vent case. Use a plain round cutter and a small knife or apple corer; day-old firm white bread cuts far more cleanly than fresh.
- Clarified butter is the pointWhole butter burns before the bread colours at the temperature needed here. Clarify it, or use ghee, and fry until pale gold rather than brown.
- Let them cool completelyThe instruction to fill when cold is the hinge of the dish. Warm bread turns caviare greasy and dulls it; the eggs should never meet residual heat.
- The no-metal ruleTraditionally attributed to reactive metals — silver in particular tarnishes against the sulphur compounds in roe and leaves a taste. Modern stainless is largely inert, but mother-of-pearl, horn or bone spoons remain the standard and cost little.
- How much caviareA dessertspoonful is about two teaspoons, so taken literally eight croutes would need some 80 g — more than a hollow this size will actually hold. Adjust to what you are prepared to spend; a scant teaspoon in each is a more usual portion now.
- What to buyWild sturgeon is protected and trade is restricted, so the caviare on sale today is farmed sturgeon, or a substitute such as trout, salmon or lumpfish roe. The lemon and cayenne here were partly designed to lift a heavily salted product; with modern lightly salted malossol grades, use a bare squeeze.
- Yield and timingEight croûtes, serving four as a savoury or two as a first course. Fry ahead, but fill within half an hour of serving or the bread softens.
This belongs to the savoury — the small, sharply seasoned course served after the sweet at late-Victorian and Edwardian dinners, and the reason cookery books of the period carry a chapter of anchovy, cheese, marrow and caviare trifles that fit on a round of fried bread. Caviare reached British tables from the Caspian by way of Russian and German exporters, arriving salted in tins and casks, and its expense made it exactly the sort of thing a "high class" manual was expected to know how to handle. The warning against metal is a familiar piece of caviare lore, often traced to silver service: sulphur compounds in the roe are said to tarnish silver and carry a taint into the eggs, an explanation commonly offered for the preference for spoons of horn, bone and mother-of-pearl, which remain the trade's standard.