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Anchovy Sandwiches
Rub the yolks of "hard-boiled eggs" to a paste. Moisten with soft butter and season with anchovy sauce. Spread mixture between thin slices of buttered bread prepared as for Bread and Butter Folds.
Fannie Farmer gives proportions for none of this, assuming a cook who could judge a spread by eye. A working ratio and a note on what "anchovy sauce" meant in 1896 are all that is really needed.
- Working proportionsFour hard-cooked yolks, about 3 tablespoons of soft butter, and 2 teaspoons of anchovy paste or bottled anchovy sauce make enough for roughly a dozen small folds. Add the sauce a little at a time and taste as you go; it is very salty and the balance is easy to overshoot.
- Anchovy sauceIn this period the term could mean either a thin bottled essence of salted anchovies with vinegar and spice, or a made sauce flavoured with anchovy; the bottled essence is what suits a spread like this. Modern anchovy paste in a tube does the same work but is much thicker and stronger, so use less and slacken the mixture with a few drops of lemon juice or cream.
- Bread and Butter FoldsThe cross-referenced method turns on buttering the end of an unsliced loaf, then cutting a very thin slice off the buttered face, so the butter goes on before the bread has a chance to tear. The slice is folded over on itself rather than topped with a second slice.
- Yolks onlyThe whites are not used here. Chop them finely for a garnish, or fold them into another sandwich filling rather than discarding them.
- Getting the paste smoothPush the yolks through a fine sieve with the back of a spoon before adding butter. Mashing with a fork leaves granules that show up badly in a spread this thin.
- Butter temperatureThe butter must be genuinely soft, not melted. Melted butter separates as the filling chills and the sandwich turns greasy.
- Holding and servingAssemble no more than a couple of hours ahead, cover with a damp cloth and then plastic, and refrigerate. Bring back to cool room temperature before serving so the butter is not stiff.
- YieldFigure two to three folds per person as part of a tea or supper spread.
Anchovy in some bottled form was one of the workhorse seasonings of the nineteenth-century pantry, and Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book calls for it in a number of savoury recipes. Sandwiches like this belonged to the afternoon tea table and the ladies' luncheon rather than to a meal proper, and the book's sandwich chapter shows the English tea sandwich well established in American middle-class entertaining: crusts trimmed, bread cut as thin as the loaf would allow, fillings smooth enough to spread without tearing. The bread-and-butter fold, buttering the loaf before slicing, is an economy of technique rather than of money.