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Anchovy Canapés
Cut the bread as for caviar canapés and spread with anchovy paste. Chop separately the yolks and whites of hard-boiled eggs and cover the canapés, dividing them into quarters, with anchovies split in two lengthwise, and using yolks and whites in alternate quarters.
A construction job more than a cooking one: the whole effect depends on neat cutting and clean separation of the egg. Everything can be prepared an hour or two ahead except the assembly.
- The missing base recipe"Cut the bread as for caviar canapés" points back to an earlier entry in the same section, which is not reproduced here. Canapé bases of this sort were generally thin, close-grained white bread, crusts trimmed, cut small into rounds or squares and either toasted or fried pale gold in butter; the recipe itself specifies none of this.
- Anchovy pasteTinned or tubed anchovy paste is still sold, and Gentleman's Relish serves the same purpose with added spice. Alternatively pound a few oil-packed fillets with an equal weight of soft butter; the butter tempers the salt and helps the paste stay put on the toast.
- Spread thinlyAnchovy paste is aggressively salty and the recipe then adds whole split anchovies on top. A scrape is enough — a thick layer will overwhelm the egg entirely.
- Hard-boiled eggsThe recipe chops the yolks and whites separately; some cooks push the yolks through a fine sieve instead for a finer texture. Either way they must be kept apart, since the visual contrast is the point of the garnish. Eggs cooked about ten minutes and cooled quickly give firm yolks without the grey ring.
- Dividing into quartersThe likeliest reading is that the split anchovy fillets are laid as crossed strips over each canapé to mark four quarters, with the yolk and white filling alternate quarters; the wording does not make this explicit. Fill the quarters with a small spoon and brush stray crumbs of egg away before serving.
- Yield and timingQuantities are not given in the recipe; work backwards from the anchovies, since each canapé needs two split strips. Assemble no more than an hour before serving -- the paste and the damp egg soften toast quickly.
Canapés of this kind belong to the era when the formal American dinner is often said to have absorbed the Russian and Scandinavian habit of small salted things eaten standing up with a drink. Anchovy paste was a staple of the well-stocked Edwardian and early twentieth-century larder, bought in a stoneware pot or a tin, and it turns up on toast, in butters, in sauces for mutton and stirred into gravies; the best-known commercial version, Patum Peperium or Gentleman's Relish, is generally traced to the 1820s in England. The sieved-yolk-and-chopped-white garnish, sometimes called mimosa when the yolk stands alone, was a decorative reflex of the period, applied to salads, aspics and cold fish as readily as to toast.