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Mock-Crab Toast
Melt a tablespoonful of butter in the blazer, turning it about so as to butter the surface thoroughly. Put in half a pound of mild cheese, grated, and stir until the cheese is melted; then add the yolks of three eggs, beaten and diluted with a tablespoonful of anchovy sauce, a teaspoonful of made mustard, two tablespoonfuls of lemon juice or vinegar and one-fourth a teaspoonful of paprica. Stir until smooth. Serve upon the untoasted side of sippets of bread toasted on one side
A chafing-dish rabbit dressed up with anchovy and lemon so that it tastes vaguely of shellfish. It comes together in about five minutes and fails in about ten seconds, so read the heat note first.
- Keep the heat gentleOnce the egg yolks go in, the mixture must not approach a simmer or it will break into curds and oily cheese. Use the hot-water pan of the chafing dish, or a heavy saucepan over the lowest flame, and pull it off the heat the moment it thickens and looks glossy.
- The blazerThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish, set either directly over the spirit lamp or over the water bath beneath it. A small nonstick or enameled saucepan does the same job.
- Mild cheeseHalf a pound is about 8 oz, roughly 2 packed cups grated. The recipe specifies only 'mild'; a mild yellow cheddar or a young Colby suits, while sharply aged cheeses are the more likely to string and separate at this temperature.
- Anchovy sauceA bottled Victorian condiment of anchovy, vinegar and spice, close to today's anchovy essence. Substitute a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, or mash one oil-packed anchovy fillet into a teaspoon of its oil.
- Made mustard"Made" mustard means mustard already mixed to a paste, not the dry powder. Use ordinary prepared yellow or Dijon mustard.
- PapricaSimply paprika, in an older variant spelling. Sweet Hungarian paprika suits here; smoked paprika will overwhelm the anchovy.
- SippetsSmall fingers or triangles of bread, cut from a thin slice. Toasting one side only leaves a soft face that soaks up the cheese while the crisp underside keeps the sippet from collapsing.
- YieldEnough for four as a savoury or light supper dish, two if it is the main event. Serve immediately, since it stiffens badly as it cools.
Mock-crab belongs to the long family of English "rabbits" and cheese savouries in which a modest ingredient is coaxed into imitating an expensive one, alongside mock turtle, mock oyster and mock terrapin. The illusion here rests entirely on the anchovy sauce and acid: fish umami plus lemon plus mustard reads to the palate as shellfish, a trick still used in mock-crab salads made with fish or, later, with surimi. That it appears among the chafing-dish chapters is a period marker in itself. Around the turn of the twentieth century the chafing dish was fashionable equipment for late suppers, bachelor rooms and after-theatre entertaining, cooked at the table by the hostess without recourse to servants or a hot kitchen range, and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s filled whole sections with cheese, egg and shellfish dishes that could be finished in a single shallow pan in a few minutes.