Olives, Stuffed
INGREDIENTS for savoury for 4 persons.--1 doz. Spanish olives, forcemeat made from tinned tunny, sardines or anchovies, a little lobster butter, plain butter, cayenne, capers, lemon-juice, 12 croûtons. AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Free the fish from skin and bone and pound it in a mortar with a little butter, OLIVES. a squeeze of lemonjuice and cayenne to taste. Stone the olives, fill them with the forcemeat, fry the croûtons and spread them, when cold, with lobster butter. On each place an olive and put a caper on the top.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A savoury — the small, salty course that closed a formal British dinner — and one of the quickest in the book once the compound butter is dealt with. Nothing here needs cooking beyond frying the bread.
- YieldA dozen olives on twelve croûtons, three apiece for four people. As drinks food it will stretch further if you use small olives, though large ones are much easier to stuff.
- Spanish olivesGreen brine-cured olives, usually taken to mean the larger sorts (queen or Gordal), firm enough to hold a filling. Buy them whole rather than pitted; the machine-pitted ones tear and leak. A cherry pitter or a narrow knife worked around the stone does the job.
- Tinned tunnyTunny is tuna. Oil-packed tuna, sardines or anchovy fillets all work, but they differ sharply in salt: anchovies will need no extra seasoning and possibly a rinse, while tuna may want a pinch.
- Lobster butterButter pounded with lobster coral and shell debris, then sieved — a standard Victorian larder item, now essentially gone from shops. If you are not making it, a butter beaten with a little tomato paste, cayenne and lemon gives the colour and the sharpness, if not the shellfish flavour.
- The mortarA food processor does this in seconds, but pulse rather than run it — the forcemeat should be a stiff paste that holds its shape in the olive cavity, not a mousse. If it slackens, chill it before piping.
- CroûtonsHere these are rounds of fried bread, roughly the diameter of an olive, not the small cubes the word now suggests; the recipe does not say what to fry them in. Fry them ahead and let them cool completely, as the recipe insists; the lobster butter will slide off warm bread.
- CayenneThe recipe leaves it to taste, as savouries of this kind generally do; piquancy was part of the course's appeal. Start with a scant pinch and taste, since the fish is already assertive.
- AssemblyBuild these no more than an hour before serving. The fried bread softens quickly once buttered, and the whole appeal is the crisp base under a soft, salty filling.
This belongs to the savoury, a course peculiar to British dining rooms of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: after the sweet and before or alongside the dessert fruit, a hot, small, emphatically salty mouthful, often on fried bread or toast. Anchovy, sardine and tinned fish appear throughout that repertoire because they delivered concentrated flavour in one bite and kept well in the store cupboard. The Spanish olive is the giveaway of period and class: large brine-cured green olives were an imported grocer's item, priced accordingly, and the ninepence given as average cost puts this among the cheaper flourishes a household with a cook could produce. Compound butters coloured and flavoured with shellfish, lobster butter among them, were standard professional practice and are the main thing separating this from a modern canapé.