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Sandwiches, Anchovy
INGREDIENTS for savoury for 6 persons.-6 slices of very thin bread-and-butter, 6 anchovies or some anchovy-paste, mustard-and-cress, cayenne. AVERAGE COST, 6d.
Spread half the slices of bread-and-butter with the anchovies boned and filleted, or the paste, and the others sprinkle over with the mustard-and-cress freed from stalks. Season with a little cayenne, then put the slices together and cut into neat sandwiches.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A savoury-course sandwich that depends almost entirely on the quality of two things: the bread and the anchovy. The instructions are complete as written; what needs translating is the vocabulary.
- "Bread-and-butter" is a preparation, not an ingredient list"Bread-and-butter" is a preparation, not two separate ingredients -- in Victorian usage the phrase means bread already buttered, and the loaf was often buttered at the cut face before the slice was taken off, so it comes away already spread and can be shaved very thin. Slice a firm, close-crumbed white loaf as thinly as it will bear, then butter it with softened butter.
- Anchovies here are salt-cured whole fishBeeton assumes anchovies packed in salt or brine with the backbone intact, which is why she tells you to bone and fillet them. Rinse off the salt, split them along the belly, lift out the spine, and pat dry. Modern tinned fillets in oil are already done and need only draining and blotting.
- Anchovy pasteThe named alternative was a commercial pounded-anchovy spread, of which Gentleman's Relish is the surviving type. Any anchovy paste works; it is generally saltier than tinned fillets in oil, so spread it in the thinnest possible film.
- Mustard-and-cressThe standard Victorian garnish salad: white mustard and garden cress sown together and cut as seedlings. Punnets are still sold in Britain; elsewhere any peppery microgreen or fine-cut watercress leaf serves. Strip the stalks as instructed or the sandwich turns stringy.
- CayenneA pinch across six slices, no more. Between salt fish and pepper the seasoning is already at its limit, and no additional salt should go anywhere near this.
- Cutting"Neat sandwiches" for a savoury means small; crusts off and a cut into fingers or triangles is the usual reading, though the recipe does not specify. Six slices makes three whole sandwiches, cut small enough to go round the six persons stated.
- TimingAssemble close to serving. Anchovy oil will soak through thin bread within the hour and the cress wilts under cayenne.
Anchovy sandwiches belong to the savoury, the small salty course served after the sweet at a Victorian and Edwardian dinner to close the palate before dessert or the port. Anchovy in particular ran through nineteenth-century British cooking in forms that had little to do with the whole fish: bottled essence, anchovy butter, anchovy toast, and the pounded pastes sold in ceramic jars, all descended from the trade in Mediterranean salt-cured fish that reached Britain in barrels. The pairing with mustard-and-cress reflects how the two things were grown and sold: cress seedlings were a cheap, quick, year-round crop raised on damp flannel or soil in shallow trays. The entry is marked seasonable at any time, a note that applies to the dish as a whole. The sixpence average cost is Beeton's usual note for a household budgeting a menu rather than a shopping list.