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Anchovy Sandwiches
Chop four hard boiled eggs very fine, sprinkle over them a teaspoonful of onion juice, then add four tablespoonfuls of olive oil, one tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar, and an even teaspoonful of salt; rub the whole as smooth as possible. Cut bread into thin slices, spread each slice with this mixture, then place small pieces of prepared anchovies over one-half the slices, put two slices together, cut into squares or diamonds, and they are ready to serve.
A straightforward egg-and-anchovy spread, but two of the ingredients are named in a way that no longer matches what is on a supermarket shelf.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on the fine side of a box grater and use the liquid that collects, or press grated pulp in a sieve. A teaspoonful is about what half a small onion gives up; the point is onion flavour without any texture in the paste.
- Prepared anchoviesFor a nineteenth-century cook this generally meant salt-packed anchovies rinsed, boned and filleted at home. Modern oil-packed fillets are the direct equivalent; if you use salt-packed, soak them 20-30 minutes and pat dry. Four eggs' worth of spread takes roughly 6-8 fillets.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, but easy to improvise: steep a few bruised tarragon sprigs in white wine vinegar for a week. Plain white vinegar is harsher and will read as sour rather than herbal.
- Rubbing it smoothThe original assumes a bowl and the back of a spoon, or a sieve, with the oil added all at once. Adding the oil gradually instead helps the yolks take it up so the mixture is less likely to sit oily and separated. A few seconds in a small food processor does it, but stop before it turns to paste.
- The breadThin slices from a close-grained white sandwich loaf, crusts off, and the spread applied edge to edge. Airy modern bread tears under a stiff egg mixture; slightly stale bread cuts cleaner into squares and diamonds.
- Yield and servingFour eggs will fill about eight sandwiches, giving roughly 30 small cut pieces. Cut them no more than an hour or two ahead and keep them covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator, since the exposed edges dry quickly.
- SaltA full teaspoon of salt plus anchovies will be very salty by current taste. Season the egg mixture lightly, then taste it against a fillet before adding more.
Sandwiches of this kind belong to the late-Victorian tea table and the picnic hamper rather than to a meal proper: nothing needs a fire but the eggs. Anchovy was one of the great savoury shortcuts of the period, sold as fillets, as paste and as "essence," and it did the work that Worcestershire sauce or fish sauce does in a modern kitchen. Tarragon vinegar in the same bowl marks the recipe as consciously French-leaning, a flavouring of the Parisian kitchen used in a dish plain enough for a household cook to manage without a chef's brigade. The instruction to cut the finished sandwiches into squares or diamonds is a genteel signal, generally traced to the fashion for small, uniform, crustless "fancy sandwiches" served at afternoon receptions.