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Sardines in Eggs
Skin and bone ten or a dozen sardines and place them in a mortar, remove the shells from an equal number of hard-boiled eggs, cut them in pieces crosswise, put the yolks in the mortar with the sardines, adding at the same time a little chopped parsley, salt, pepper and one-tablespoonful of butter; pound all together, fill the whites of the eggs with the above mixture, stick them together like whole eggs, arrange them on a dish with watercress between them and serve.
Beef Marrow on Toast Take some large pieces of marrow and put them in a saucepan of well salted boiling water, and let them remain for one minute, then drain off the water through a very fine sieve. Take out the marrow, put it on some pieces of toasted bread, place them in the oven, and cook for five minutes. Sprinkle over them chopped parsley, salt and pepper, and serve very hot.
Two cold-larder standbys run together on one page: a stuffed-egg canapé built on tinned sardines, and marrow on toast. Both are quick, and both depend on fat behaving itself.
- Two recipes, one pageThe text runs Beef Marrow on Toast straight on from the sardine eggs with no break. They are unrelated dishes and should be read as such.
- The sardinesMost likely tinned sardines in oil, a common pantry item of the period, though the instruction to skin and bone them would suit fresh fish too. Drain them well and lift out the backbone; the small pin bones break down in the pounding and need not be chased.
- Mortar or processorA food processor does the job in fifteen seconds, but pulse rather than run it — sardine paste turns to a slack emulsion if the oil breaks out. A fork and a bowl are perfectly adequate for a dozen eggs.
- Butter temperatureThe tablespoon of butter must be genuinely soft, at room temperature, or it will stay in flecks and the filling will not hold its shape when the halves are pressed back together.
- "Stick them together like whole eggs"The two halves are reassembled around a slightly overfilled centre so each looks like an intact hard-boiled egg. Cut the eggs crosswise, as directed, so the halves sit as cups rather than boats, and chill the finished eggs briefly before arranging them or they will slide apart.
- Marrow bonesAsk for centre-cut or canoe-cut beef marrow bones; a large bone may yield a couple of ounces of marrow. Soaking the bones in cold salted water for several hours first draws out blood and keeps the marrow pale, though the recipe says nothing of it.
- The one-minute blanchThis is the hinge. Marrow left in hot water too long begins to melt away. One minute in boiling salted water sets the outside just enough to handle it; take it out on time.
- Oven for the toastNo temperature is given, and the book gives none anywhere. A moderately hot oven — around 400F is a workable modern reading — for the stated five minutes should warm the marrow through without letting it run off the bread. Use a sturdy toast that will not go soggy.
- Yield and servingThe eggs give ten to twelve pieces, enough for six as a first course or more on a canapé tray. Marrow toast is rich; one or two small fingers per person, served immediately, since marrow congeals unpleasantly as it cools.
Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896) catalogues the working repertoire of the Waldorf. Tinned sardines were a genuinely fashionable luxury in late nineteenth-century America — imported, and sold in decorative tins — which is why they turn up here bound with butter and egg yolk in the manner of a French farce. Marrow on toast came out of the same Anglo-French tradition: marrow bones were a standard savoury course in Victorian dining, served at the end of the meal with toast and a marrow scoop, and the recipe has the extracted marrow blanched briefly before being finished in the oven.