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Croustades of Mushrooms
Peel and chop an onion very fine, place it in a fryingpan with a little butter and fry to a light golden color. Stir often, add four or five ounces of finely-chopped mushrooms, and simmer gently until they are about three-fourths done. Put two soaked anchovies in a mortar and pound them, adding gradually one teaspoonful of mustard and three tablespoonfuls of brown sauce; put this in with the mushrooms and boil for two or three minutes longer or until they are done. Have prepared some croustade cases, fill them up with the mixture, and serve at once.
A savoury of the kind that closed an Edwardian dinner or went round with drinks. It is quick, but two things in it need translation: the croustade cases and the brown sauce.
- Croustade casesSmall cups of crustless bread pressed into muffin tins, brushed with butter and baked until crisp and gold, or cases cut from puff pastry. Bought vol-au-vent shells or filo cups do the same job.
- Brown sauceIn a hotel kitchen of this date this meant a classic brown sauce built on stock, thick and glossy. Three tablespoons is a binder, not a sauce: a reduced beef or veal demi-glace, or a small quantity of well-reduced stock thickened with a brown roux, gives the right body. Bottled 'brown sauce' of the HP type is a different thing entirely and will not work.
- Soaked anchoviesSalt-packed anchovies were the norm; they are rinsed and soaked in cold water or milk for 20-30 minutes to draw out salt, then filleted. Oil-packed fillets need no soaking at all -- use two, and pound or mash them to a paste.
- The mustardAmbiguous in the original. A teaspoon of English mustard powder and a teaspoon of made mustard are not the same strength; start with the smaller effect and taste, since the anchovy is already carrying a lot of the seasoning.
- Mushroom moistureFour to five ounces of chopped mushrooms will throw a good deal of liquid. Cook them hard enough that the pan goes dry again before the anchovy and sauce go in, or the filling will soak the cases from beneath.
- SaltNothing in the method calls for salt, and rightly so. Between anchovy, mustard and a reduced brown sauce the mixture is already well seasoned; season at the end if at all.
- TimingThe whole thing is quick, well under half an hour. Fill the cases at the last moment -- 'serve at once' is the operative instruction, as a filled croustade softens fairly fast.
- YieldFour to five ounces of mushrooms fills roughly six to eight small cases, enough for a savoury course for four.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the repertoire of a hotel kitchen at the point when the French service of Escoffier's generation had settled firmly into American luxury dining. A croustade filling like this one belongs to the *savoury*, the small hot, salty course served after the sweet in the English fashion -- anchovy, mustard and mushroom are its standard vocabulary, the same one that produces Scotch woodcock and devilled toasts. The pounded anchovy in a mortar is a reminder of how much of that kitchen's flavour came from salt fish and reduced stock rather than from spice. Cooking such a dish at home means building in a few minutes what the Waldorf had standing by the gallon.