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Two French Gherkins
One teaspoonful of chopped Parsley.
Half a teaspoonful of chopped Tarragon and Chervil.
Half a tablespoonful of Wine Vinegar.
One tablespoonful of Sweet Oil.
Quarter of a stick of Celery.
About half a pound of Cassolette Paste.
Prepare the cassolette paste as given below, roll it out very thin, line ten or twelve little round fluted moulds. Place a round buttered paper in each, fill up with rice, and bake for fifteen minutes in a moderately heated oven. Take out the rice and papers, replace them on a baking-sheet in the oven so that they may become quite crisp, then put them on a sieve to cool.
Cut the lax, tongue and gherkins in little strips.
Season lightly with oil, vinegar, and chopped herbs. Fill the little cases carefully with this; stone the olives and place one in the centre of each. Cream the butter, put it in a forcing-bag or paper cornet with a fancy piping tube, and ornament the surface and edge to taste. Keep in a cool place until required for table, then dish up on little round glass saucers, and garnish with tiny bunches of shredded celery and sprigs of parsley.
A set of Edwardian hors d'oeuvre tartlets: crisp blind-baked pastry cases filled with a herbed salad of smoked salmon, tongue and gherkin. The ingredient list as printed is a fragment of a longer one — the lax, tongue, olives, butter and the cassolette paste itself carry no quantities — so treat it as a method to be scaled by eye.
- The hinge: bake the cases twiceThe cases are blind-baked with rice, then returned to the oven empty so the inside dries out. Skip the second bake and the filling's oil and vinegar will soften the pastry within minutes of assembly.
- LaxThe Scandinavian word for salmon (cognate with Old English leax), used in English cookery books of the period to mean salted or smoked salmon. Cold-smoked salmon sliced thin and cut into julienne strips is the modern equivalent.
- TongueCooked, pressed ox tongue, a common enough cold meat at the time. Deli-sliced cured tongue works; lean cooked ham is a reasonable substitute where tongue is hard to find.
- Cassolette pasteA short pastry for small cases; cassolette in French is a small dish or pan. Any firm sweet-free shortcrust rolled very thin will do; the recipe directs you to the paste "as given below".
- Sweet oilPlain olive oil; the term generally signals fresh, unrancid oil fit for the table. Half a tablespoon of vinegar to one of oil is a sharp dressing, sharper than the usual 1:3, which suits the rich pastry and fatty salmon.
- Oven temperature"a moderately heated oven" corresponds roughly to 350-375F (175-190C). Fifteen minutes with the rice, as directed, then a further spell in the oven empty -- the recipe gives no time, so go by the bases being dry and pale gold.
- Baking beansRice and buttered paper are exactly modern blind-baking practice. Dried beans or ceramic weights over parchment do the same job; the rice, once baked, is no longer worth cooking and should be kept for reuse as weights.
- HerbsParsley, tarragon and chervil are three of the four classic fines herbes (chives being the fourth). Fresh is much better here; dried tarragon and chervil give little in an uncooked filling.
- Yield and timingTen to twelve small tartlets, one or two per person as a first course or with drinks. Bake the cases ahead, but fill them no more than an hour before serving and keep them cold.
This belongs to the hors d'oeuvre service of the late Victorian and Edwardian dining room, where a number of small cold dishes -- anchovies, sardines, olives, radishes, salads in little glass saucers -- opened a long dinner. The style is the Anglo-French professional kitchen of the period: French vocabulary (cassolette, fines herbes), a Scandinavian import in the smoked lax, and the English addition of pressed ox tongue, a far more everyday cold meat then than now. Piping creamed butter through a fancy tube to finish a savoury is a garnish habit common in books of this class, which assume a forcing-bag and a set of fluted moulds.