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One Yolk of Egg (Two ounces of grated Parmesan)
Two ounces of grated Parmesan.
Cayenne. Parsley. Scrape, wipe, and bone one dozen Gorgona anchovies, roll out some short paste or remnants of puff paste rather thin, enclose each anchovy neatly in the paste; place them on a bakingsheet, brush them over with the beaten yolk of egg, mark slightly with a knife, sprinkle some grated Parmesan cheese and a pinch of cayenne over each; bake them in a quick oven for ten minutes. Dish them up on a folded napkin, garnish with parsley, and serve quickly.
A dozen anchovies baked in pastry, meant to come out of the oven and go straight to the table as the savoury course. The whole thing takes about twenty minutes once the anchovies are prepared.
- Serve them hot, immediately"Serve quickly" is the instruction that matters. The pastry softens and the anchovy oil turns heavy within a few minutes of leaving the oven, so bake them last and carry them out at once.
- A quick oven425-450F. Ten minutes is right for thin pastry at that heat; the parcels should be set and coloured, not deeply browned.
- Gorgona anchoviesGorgona, off the Tuscan coast, was known for anchovies salted whole in barrels, and nineteenth-century English cookery writers regularly specify Gorgona anchovies as the best sort. The modern equivalent is whole salt-packed anchovies, which is what "scrape, wipe, and bone" describes: rinse the salt off, wipe dry, and open the fish to lift out the backbone. Oil-packed fillets work and need only draining and patting dry.
- The pastry"Short paste" is plain shortcrust; puff trimmings were the thriftier option and give a lighter result. Roll thin, around 1/8 inch, and cut strips just wide enough to wrap each fillet with a small overlap.
- Egg washOne yolk beaten with a teaspoon of water brushes twelve parcels comfortably. "Mark slightly with a knife" means scoring the surface for decoration, not cutting through.
- Salt and cayenneAdd no salt anywhere. Salt-packed anchovies and Parmesan supply plenty, and a pinch of cayenne per parcel is genuinely a pinch.
- YieldTwelve pieces, which is one or two each for a savoury course at the end of dinner, or a plate of canapes for four to six with drinks.
- The folded napkinA period serving convention; the linen would also soak up any fat, keeping the pastry from sitting in it. A paper-lined warm dish does the same job.
This belongs to the savoury, the small hot salty course that came after the sweet at British dinners from roughly the 1870s to the Second World War, and anchovies were among its most common ingredients. Anchovy straws, anchovy toasts and these baked parcels all traded on the same thing: imported salted fish, cayenne and Parmesan giving a sharp finish to a long meal, supposedly to settle the palate before the port. Salt-cured anchovies reached Britain packed in barrels from the Mediterranean, and named sources such as Gorgona were sold at a premium. The recipe's blunt thrift is worth noting: "remnants of puff paste" assumes there are trimmings from something grander lying about, and turning them into a savoury was the obvious use for them.