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Anchovy Patties
Make some paste and roll it out thinly. Take a coffee cup and turning it upside down stamp out some rounds. Turn the cup the right way again, and put it on a round. Then you will see an edge of paste protruding all round. Turn this up with the end of a fork, which makes a pretty little edge. Do this with all, and fill the shallow cases then made with a good mayonnaise sauce in which you have put chopped celery and potato, and a small quantity of chopped gherkins. Lay three fillets of anchovy across each other to form a six-pointed star and season highly with cayenne pepper. All the above recipes can be followed using sardines instead of anchovies, and indeed one can use them in many other ways, with eggs, with lettuce, with tomatoes. As anchovies are rather expensive to buy, I give a recipe for mock anchovies, which is easy to do, but it must be done six months before using the fish.
A cold hors d'oeuvre built on small pastry shells. The original assumes a good deal of knowledge it never states, chiefly that the pastry has to be baked before anything wet goes near it.
- The pastry is baked firstNothing in the text says to cook the cases, but they must be. Bake the shaped rounds on a tray at 400F for 10-12 minutes until dry and pale gold, then cool completely before filling; mayonnaise on raw dough is inedible.
- "Paste"Period English for pastry dough. A short crust made with butter is right here; puff would lift and lose the shallow well the cup makes.
- The cup trickA coffee cup of the period runs roughly two and a half to three inches across the rim. Stamp the round with the inverted cup, then set the cup upright on the round and press lightly so a narrow collar of pastry stands proud, and turn that collar up with the fork tines. Roll thin, about 1/8 inch, or the base puffs and the well disappears.
- AnchoviesSalt-packed fillets need rinsing and a soak in milk or water for 10 minutes, then patting dry. Oil-packed tinned fillets can go straight on, drained. Either way they are salty enough that the mayonnaise filling needs no added salt.
- The fillingChopped celery and cooked, cooled potato bound with mayonnaise, plus a little chopped gherkin. Dice everything small enough to sit level in a shallow case, and keep the mixture stiff rather than loose.
- "Season highly with cayenne"The heat is meant to cut the oily fish, not dominate. A pinch dusted over the finished star does the work; taste before adding more.
- Assemble lateFilled cases soften quickly. Bake the shells a day ahead and keep them airtight, mix the filling ahead, and put the two together shortly before serving.
- YieldNot given. A batch of short crust using 8 oz flour should make somewhere around 16 to 18 small cases, enough for eight as a first course or for a canape tray.
- The "mock anchovies"The closing sentence points to a separate recipe elsewhere in the book, a cure of small fish that must be started six months ahead. That is a different proposition entirely and should not be attempted from a century-old text without measured salt concentrations and temperatures.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and it was sold in aid of relief funds. That origin shows in pages like this one: the writing is conversational, with the assumption that any reader already knows how to make and bake pastry. Anchovy patties belong to the long European tradition of the small savoury served at the start or the very end of a meal, and the aside about cost is telling. Anchovies were an imported luxury, while sardines were a cheap tinned staple of the period, which is why the substitution is offered in the same breath and then a home-cured imitation for anyone who could afford neither.