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Anchovy Toast with Eggs
Prepare the anchovy toast in one chafing-dish, and, at the same time, the eggs in another. Beat five eggs slightly, add half a teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper and half a cup of cream or milk.
Put a large tablespoonful of butter in the blazer; when melted, add the egg mixture. Stir until the egg is creamy, and serve on the anchovy toast.
A chafing-dish supper dish that assumes you own two chafing dishes and a jar of anchovy paste. Both assumptions are easily worked around; the eggs are the part that rewards attention.
- The blazerThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish, set directly over the flame. Many chafing dishes also have a hot-water pan beneath it; for eggs, use the blazer alone over low heat, or simply a heavy nonstick or enameled skillet on the lowest burner setting.
- Anchovy toastThe recipe presumably referred to elsewhere in the book would be anchovy paste creamed with butter and spread on hot buttered toast; period versions vary. A modern equivalent: mash 2-3 teaspoons anchovy paste, or four or five oil-packed fillets, into 3 tablespoons softened butter and spread it on toast cut into fingers or triangles.
- Two dishes, one cookIf you have only one pan, make the anchovy butter ahead and hold it at room temperature, toast the bread last, and give the eggs your full attention. They are the only element with a narrow window.
- Creamy means underdone"Stir until the egg is creamy" is the hinge. Pull the pan off the heat while the curds are still glossy and loose; residual heat carries them the rest of the way, and a chafing dish holds heat longer than it looks. Firm scrambled eggs on anchovy toast is a different and lesser dish.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon of salt for five eggs is reasonable on its own, but anchovy paste is very salty and so is the butter it is creamed with. Cut the salt in the eggs to a quarter teaspoon and taste.
- Cream or milkHalf a cup for five eggs is generous by modern habit and gives a soft, almost custardy result. Heavy cream gives the richest curd; whole milk is fine. Skip it entirely if you prefer a firmer scramble.
- YieldFive eggs and four to six pieces of toast serve two as a light supper or four as a savoury course.
The chafing dish had a long vogue in American middle-class households from roughly the 1890s through the 1910s, when spirit-lamp cookery at the table was a fashionable way to feed guests after the theatre or at a late Sunday supper. Anchovy paste was a workhorse savoury flavouring of the era, sold in glass jars and small tins and shelf-stable in a way few other strong seasonings were; it appears in period cookbooks as anchovy toast, anchovy butter and anchovy sauce. The pairing of a sharp salt-cured fish with soft eggs on toast sits within the British savoury tradition, the small piquant course served after or in place of a sweet, which American hostess manuals of this period drew on.