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Savouries and Hors (II)
D'ŒUVRES.
Betterave à l'Orientale. (Dressed Beetroot.) Ingredients.
One small Beetroot.
One hard-boiled Egg.
Twelve fillets of Anchovy.
One dessertspoonful of Capers.
One dessertspoonful of Gherkins.
The page gives only the ingredient list — the method has been cut off with the section heading — so what follows is mostly about quantities, ingredient equivalents, and how a dish of this type was assembled in an Edwardian kitchen.
- The missing methodNothing here tells you what to do, but the composition is standard for a cold hors d'oeuvre of this kind: cooked beetroot cut in small dice or fine julienne, the hard-boiled egg chopped or sieved, anchovy fillets laid over or around, capers and gherkins scattered, the whole moistened with a sharp vinaigrette. Dress the beetroot only just before serving or it bleeds into everything.
- DessertspoonfulA dessertspoon sits between teaspoon and tablespoon: roughly two teaspoons, about 10 ml. Two of them here, one of capers and one of gherkins.
- The beetrootThe recipe assumes it is already cooked, and cooked beetroot was commonly available ready-boiled. One small beetroot is perhaps 4 oz. Vacuum-packed cooked beetroot works; avoid the sort stored in sweetened malt vinegar, which fights the anchovy.
- Anchovy filletsTwelve fillets means twelve halves from salt- or oil-packed anchovies, not a modern anchovy paste. Salt-packed fillets need rinsing and a short soak in milk or water; oil-packed can go straight on, blotted dry.
- GherkinsMost likely small cucumbers pickled in vinegar, cornichon-style, rather than sweet pickle. Slice them thin or chop them fine — they are a seasoning here, not a garnish in their own right.
- The eggHard-boiled and cooled completely before it meets the beetroot. Sieving yolk and white separately and arranging them apart was one common presentation in this style of cookery, and it keeps the plate legible.
- Yield and servingThese quantities would fill one small hors d'oeuvre dish, a few mouthfuls each as part of a spread of several such dishes. Serve cold rather than chilled hard.
Dishes like this belong to the tradition of the hors d'oeuvre varié dishes — a spread of small cold dishes such as beetroot, sardines, olives, potato salad, herring — set out at the start of a formal dinner or at luncheon, each in its own shallow ravier. The name à l'Orientale is inconsistent in classical French usage, attaching to a varied set of preparations, and one reading is that in professional kitchens of the period it was applied loosely to anything judged piquant or highly seasoned; on that reading it tells you more about the fashion for exotic labelling than about any actual eastern origin. Anchovy in particular did enormous work in British high-class cookery of this era, supplying the savoury depth that later cooks would get from other sources, and it explains why a plain boiled beetroot could be considered a savoury at all. The truncated entry is a reminder that these professional manuals were written for cooks who already knew how to build a salad and needed only the proportions.