Anchovy Butter
1/2 lb., 1s. 2d INGREDIENTS. -To every 1/2 lb. of butter allow 6 anchovies, 1. small bunch of parsley. AVERAGE COST, lb., 1s. 2d.
Wash, bone, and pound the anchovies well in a mortar; scald the parsley, chop it, and rub through a sieve; then pound all the ingredients together, mix well, and THE ANCHOVY. make the butter into pats immediately.
This makes a pretty dish, if fancifully moulded, for breakfast or supper, and should be garnished with parsley.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Anchovy Canapés. - INGREDIENTS.-2 slices of stale bread, 8 anchovies, 2 eggs, butter for frying. AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Cut the bread one third of an inch thick and stamp out with a cutter small rounds about the size of a penny and fry a nice golden brown in the butter. Bone and fillet the anchovies and boil the eggs hard.
Curl two fillets on each croûton and fill up the centre with the white of egg chopped fine and the yellow rubbed through a sieve.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Two cold savouries from the same jar of anchovies: a compound butter and the canapés it garnishes. Both are assembly work, and both depend entirely on how salty your anchovies are.
- QuantitiesHalf a pound of butter is two American sticks (225 g); soften it to room temperature before pounding or nothing will emulsify. The instruction to bone the anchovies implies whole salt-cured fish rather than prepared fillets, so six of them would give roughly twelve modern tinned fillets.
- Salted vs. tinned anchoviesSalt-packed anchovies need rinsing and a soak before boning, which is what "wash, bone" assumes. Oil-packed fillets from a tin are already boned and much milder in salt, so taste as you go and add no further salt to the butter.
- Mortar or processorA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but pulse rather than run it — over-worked butter breaks and weeps. Keep everything cool.
- The parsley stepScalding and sieving the parsley was done for colour and to remove fibre; it gives a smooth green butter rather than a flecked one. Blanch 30 seconds, refresh in cold water, squeeze dry, then chop very fine. Skipping the sieve costs you nothing but a slightly rougher texture.
- "Make into pats immediately"The butter is soft and workable from the pounding and stiffens as it cools. Either roll it in parchment into a log and chill, or press into small moulds while still soft — once cold it will crack instead of taking a shape.
- Canapé roundsA pre-decimal penny was about 1 1/4 inches across, so cut rounds of that size from bread a third of an inch thick. Stale bread is specified because fresh bread drinks butter and goes greasy in the pan.
- Frying the croûtonsButter alone browns and burns quickly at the heat needed; clarified butter, or butter with a little neutral oil, holds up better. Drain the rounds on paper and let them cool fully before topping or the egg will slide.
- Assembly and yieldTwo slices of bread give roughly 8-10 rounds, enough for two or three people as a savoury. The butter makes about a cup — far more than the canapés need, so keep the surplus wrapped in the refrigerator for a week, or frozen for three months.
Anchovy was the great background flavour of the British kitchen for two centuries: as essence, as paste, as the base of Gentleman's Relish, and as the salt note in everything from steak sauce to boiled mutton. A compound butter like this one belongs to the long tradition of moulded breakfast and supper-table butters, presented "fancifully moulded" in wooden or ceramic pats alongside the toast rack. The canapés are the later, more fashionable relative: the savoury course served at the close of a formal Edwardian dinner, or handed round before it, drew heavily on anchovy for exactly the same reason it had always been used, being intensely salty, keeping indefinitely, and available in a country whose own anchovy fishery was negligible. Both dishes are simply titled "Anchovy —", which is enough to explain why butter and croûton sit together.