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Scotch Woodcock
3 hard cooked eggs 3 tablespoonfuls grated cheese I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) flour I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter 1 gill (1/2 cup) milk 1 gill (1/2 cup) stock ½ teaspoonful anchovy extract Salt, pepper, and red pepper 1 teaspoonful chopped parsley 2 rounds buttered toast Place one round of toast in a buttered fireproof dish. Chop the whites of the eggs and mix them with one tablespoonful of the cheese and seasoning of salt, pepper, and red pepper; place the other round of toast on the top, put in the oven to keep hot.
Blend the butter and flour in a saucepan over the fire; stir in the milk, stock, anchovy, the remainder of the cheese, and seasoning. Cook for a few minutes and pour over the toast.
Divide the toast into squares, garnish with the chopped parsley and the yolks of eggs rubbed through a sieve.
Serve hot.
A savoury of anchovy, cheese and egg on toast, here rebuilt as a layered dish in a small baking vessel. The sauce carries the whole thing, so mix and season it deliberately.
- The hinge: a thick sauce, thinned to tasteOne ounce each of butter and flour to a total of one cup of liquid gives a heavy coating sauce that will sit on the toast rather than soak through it. Cook the roux two minutes before adding liquid, add the milk and stock gradually, and hold back a little extra stock in case it stiffens past pouring consistency.
- Anchovy extractThis was a bottled essence, sold alongside meat extracts. Anchovy paste from a tube is the closest current equivalent; use about a scant teaspoon and taste before adding salt, since both the paste and the cheese are already salty.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not a fresh chilli. A pinch is enough; it is there for warmth behind the anchovy, not heat you can identify.
- Grated cheeseUnspecified grated cheese in a savoury of this period is usually a dry hard cheese: an English Cheddar or a Parmesan. Three tablespoons is not much, so use something with real savour rather than a mild block.
- Fireproof dish and ovenA shallow individual gratin dish or small ceramic casserole. "Put in the oven to keep hot" means a warming heat only, and only for as long as it takes to finish the sauce; any hotter and the toast dries to a cracker.
- GillHalf a cup, as the recipe notes. Stock means light meat or chicken stock; unsalted is preferable here given the anchovy.
- The eggsHard-cooked eggs sieved for garnish should be freshly cooked and still warm, or they read as cold and chalky against the hot sauce. Chop the whites finely so they mix evenly with the cheese layer.
- YieldTwo rounds of toast: one generous serving as a light supper, or two small portions if cut into squares and passed as a savoury.
Scotch woodcock is one of the British savouries served at the end of a formal dinner, after the sweet and before the port, alongside Welsh rabbit, devils on horseback and cheese straws. Its usual form is soft scrambled egg spread on toast that has been buttered with anchovy, and the name belongs to the same joking family as Welsh rabbit and Bombay duck: no woodcock is involved, and the Scottish connection is unexplained. The version here substitutes a sieved-egg and anchovy sauce for the scramble.