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Olive Custards
Stone some olives. Beat two eggs well, put them into a lined stewpan with two ounces of grated Parmesan cheese, and with a wooden spoon, stir over the fire until they are thick, then remove the pan. Cut as much bread as there are olives, fry them in boiling butter until they are of a light golden brown and drain; spread them with a layer of the anchovy paste, then with a layer of the cheese mixture and put an olive on each. Spread an ornamented napkin on a dish, arrange the rounds on it and serve.
A savoury canapé of fried bread, anchovy, a stiff Parmesan egg custard and an olive. The whole thing hinges on cooking the egg-and-cheese mixture gently enough that it thickens into a spreadable paste rather than scrambling.
- Low heat, or a double boilerTwo eggs with 2 oz grated Parmesan can curdle quickly over a direct flame. Use the lowest possible burner or set the pan over simmering water, and stir constantly until it holds the shape of the spoon — it should be thick enough to spread, not lumpy.
- "Lined stewpan"Most likely a tin-lined copper pan; bare copper can discolour and taint an egg mixture. Any heavy nonstick or enamelled saucepan does the job now.
- The anchovy pasteThe definite article suggests a paste the reader was expected to have to hand, though the recipe never specifies one. Tubed anchovy paste is the direct equivalent; anchovy fillets mashed with a little butter also work. Salt nothing else in the dish — the anchovy and Parmesan carry it.
- "Boiling butter"Hot, foaming butter rather than literally boiling; no temperature is given. Butter browns and burns at frying temperature, so use clarified butter or half butter and half neutral oil, and fry the bread rounds in batches so the fat stays hot.
- Cut the bread to fitCut rounds with a small cutter, about the diameter of a large olive, from firm day-old white bread — one round per olive. Fresh soft bread soaks up fat and goes limp under the custard.
- OlivesAny firm brine-cured olive; pit them yourself rather than buying pitted, which are softer and wetter. Pat them dry so they sit on the custard without weeping.
- Yield and timingTwo eggs and 2 oz cheese should cover roughly 20 to 24 small rounds, perhaps six to eight servings as a savoury or a drinks course. Assemble within a few minutes of serving; the fried bread softens quickly once topped.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his cook book in 1896, when a formal dinner in the English and Anglo-American manner still closed with a savoury — a small hot, salty mouthful served after the sweet and before dessert fruit, said by tradition to settle the palate for port. Anchovy, Parmesan, olives and fried bread were the standard vocabulary of that course, and this dish is a compact assembly of all four; close relatives appear in period books as canapés, croûtes and toasts under many different names. The word "custard" here means only that eggs are thickened by heat, with no sugar and no baking involved, a usage older and broader than the dessert sense that has since crowded it out.