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Epicurean Sandwiches
Cream four tablespoonfuls of butter and one teaspoonful of mustard. Press the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs through a sieve and add them to the butter and mustard. Then add four boned anchovies, four small pickles, a teaspoonful of chives and a sprig of tarragon, chopped together until fine. Cut stale bread in fingers or other fanciful shapes, and spread with the mixture.
Press two pieces together.
A compound butter sandwich in the French style — essentially a beurre de Montpellier spread on cut bread. Everything depends on chopping the garnish fine enough that it spreads smoothly.
- Quantities and yieldFour tablespoons of butter (half a stick) plus four egg yolks gives roughly two-thirds of a cup of spread, enough for about twenty small finger sandwiches. It is a cocktail portion, not lunch.
- Cream the butter properlyThe butter must be genuinely soft and beaten pale before the sieved yolks go in, or the mixture will be grainy and tear the bread. Room temperature for an hour, then work it with a wooden spoon or paddle.
- The mustardA teaspoonful of "mustard" in a recipe of this period may well mean dry mustard powder, which would make the spread sharp, though prepared mustard is also possible. Prepared Dijon works but is milder and adds liquid; if using it, add it slowly so the butter does not break.
- AnchoviesSalt-packed anchovies were the norm and needed boning; oil-packed fillets from a tin are already boned and considerably less salty. Four fillets is right — taste before adding salt anywhere else.
- "Small pickles"Most likely cornichons or gherkins in vinegar rather than sweet pickles, though the recipe does not specify. Blot them dry after chopping or the spread will weep into the bread.
- Chop everything togetherThe instruction to chop the anchovies, pickles, chives and tarragon "together until fine" is not incidental. A single fine mince distributes the herbs evenly; separately chopped pieces give pockets of raw tarragon.
- Why stale breadDay-old bread cuts into clean fingers and shapes without compressing under the knife. Fresh bread drags. Chill the loaf briefly if it is still soft.
- Holding themOnce assembled, cover with a damp cloth and refrigerate up to a few hours. The butter firms and the sandwiches slice cleanly, but the herbs dull overnight.
"Epicurean" was one of the standard turn-of-the-century labels for anything rich, savoury and vaguely French — a word that promised the diner sophistication rather than describing a technique. The spread itself is close kin to beurre de Montpellier, the classic French compound butter of herbs, anchovy, pickle and egg yolk used to coat cold fish, and its appearance here as a sandwich filling shows how quickly restaurant garnishes were adapted for the tea table. Books of this kind served the fashionable early-1900s appetite for informal entertaining. Cutting bread into "fingers or other fanciful shapes" was the era's signature: the sandwich was as much decoration as food.