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Savoury Entremets: Tartare
Croûtes à l'Albert are spread with a mixture of buttered eggs with cheese, and sprinkled with chopped tongue. à la Rosamonde are rolled fillets of anchovies on slices of tomato, garnished with hard-boiled yolk of egg. à la Burlington are spread with minced chicken in Tartare sauce, covered with a slice of tomato, and garnished with cream of chicken and a stuffed olive in the centre. à la Berne are spread with chopped olives, shallots and parsley, covered with chopped tongue, and have a hard-boiled yolk of egg seasoned with oil and vinegar on each. They are served hot. à la Marie are spread with foie gras, garnished with dried cherries stuffed with foie gras, and decorated with whipped cream. à la Clarisse are spread with shreds of ham and anchovy, covered with little slices of bacon, and are dipped in batter and fried. à la Normande are spread with a shrimp paste. à la Yarmouth are spread with bloater paste. In addition to these, croûtes may be served aux harengs, with fillets of herring; de homard à la Tartare, with chopped lobster and Tartare sauce; à la moëlle, with marrow; aux champignons, or aux épinards, with a purée of mushrooms or spinach; and may be garnished with yolk and white of egg, chopped celery, beetroot, parsley, etc. Cheese biscuits are often used for croûtes instead of fried bread.
P Canapés d'œufs are biscuits or tartlets of cheese or anchovy pastry spread with buttered eggs. With curried eggs, they are à la Madras. à Madame-tartlets of anchovy pastry filled with chopped potato in Mayonnaise sauce, garnished with fillets of anchovies, and aspic. à la Prince de Galles very small rolls filled with chopped ham, anchovies, gherkins and truffles, with oil, vinegar, etc. The tops covered with aspic or Mayonnaise sauce.
Croustades à la Versailles are little soufflés of anchovy on croustades of anchovy pastry. à la Mancelle-croustades of anchovy pastry filled with a savoury purée of chestnuts.
Crèmes aux fines herbes are little moulds of savoury custard with chopped herbs. de Galles is Welsh rare-bit. It is sometimes called Bonne-bouche à la Galloise. With the addition of chopped gherkin it is à l'Irlandaise. à l'Égyptienne-savoury creams of three different sorts and colours, served in small Neapolitan ice cases, imitating Neapolitan ices. à la Beatrice are little creams of cheese, breadcrumbed and fried. à la Richelieu-little anchovy creams, breadcrumbed and fried; served with a cheese sauce.
Tartines de caviar-Russian caviar spread on small slices of buttered toast.
Tartines or Sandwiches à la Jardinière-little sandwiches of bread and butter with small salad and Mayonnaise sauce. à la Mancelle are made with a purée of chestnuts. à l'Impériale are made of brown bread and butter with a cream of bloater, and chopped celery and tarragon. à la Gréville are made with brown bread, and pounded meat with capers and anchovies, and each one is masked half with brown and half with white sauce. à la Pompadour are made of brown bread with potted game or chicken, and are masked with several different coloured sauces - white, brown, and coloured with tomato and spinach. à la Princesse are made in the same way, but are masked with Mayonnaise sauce and decorated with macédoine vegetables.
A variety of sandwiches may also be made with cheese, anchovy, shrimps, eggs, cucumber, etc.
Pages of small savoury objects made to be handed round: fried bread with things spread on it, pastry cases, little moulded creams, sandwiches. The course they belong to came after the sweet, which is the single most confusing thing about them.
- Where it came in the mealThe savoury was served near the end of an English dinner, after the pudding and before the fruit. It is a course designed to be salty after something sweet, which is why anchovy, bloater, cheese and olive run through every line of it, and why none of this is a starter.
- CroûteFried bread, not toast: a small round or finger fried in butter until it is crisp right through and will carry a wet spread without going limp. The page notes that cheese biscuits were often used instead, which is the same idea reached by another route.
- Bloater and anchovy pasteA bloater is a lightly smoked whole herring, and the paste made from it was sold in jars as anchovy paste still is. These entries assume a pot off the shelf, so the hostess’s work is the spreading and the garnishing rather than the pounding.
- Colour as the pointSandwiches masked half in brown sauce and half in white; creams in three colours; quenelles in green, red and black. This is food composed to be looked at down the length of a table by candlelight, and the entries specify appearance where a modern recipe would specify flavour.
- Welsh rarebit in FrenchCrèmes de Galles is Welsh rare-bit, and the page offers a second French name for it, Bonne-bouche à la Galloise, as though one were not enough. Nothing whatever about the dish changes.
- A savoury in the shape of a puddingÀ l’Égyptienne is three savoury creams of different colours packed into the small cases used for Neapolitan ice and sent to table looking exactly like ices. A deliberate trick, and the clearest sign of how much this course was about surprise.
Almost every dish on these pages carries a woman’s name: Rosamonde, Marie, Clarisse, Beatrice, Princesse, Pompadour, à Madame. Elsewhere the book names dishes after places and sauces; here it names them after people, so that a hostess could put a line on her card that read as a compliment. The practical demand behind that is considerable. Every item is one of twenty or thirty identical small objects, each spread, garnished, masked and decorated by hand: a stuffed olive set in the centre of each, a hard-boiled yolk on each, aspic brushed over the top of each. A course like this cannot be produced by one person who is also cooking dinner. It is the part of the meal that tells you most plainly how many hands were in the kitchen.