No. 992

Toast with Oil and Cheese, Sardines a la Seville

Rotie a l'Huile et au Fromage, aux Sardines et a la Seville

Toast some slices of bread three inches by one and a half; dip them in fine olive oil, and lay them on a dish; strew over some grated parmesan, pepper and lemon juice, set them for a few seconds into the oven, giving them just sufficient time to melt the cheese, and serve the instant they leave the oven.

For Sardine Toast.—Instead of the cheese, pound a few anchovies with an equal quantity of fresh butter and a pinch of parsley; with this butter cover some slices of toasted bread. Wipe off gently with a cloth the skins from a few sardines, lay them on top of the toast, then set them in the oven for a few minutes, and serve very hot.

Toast a la Seville.—Chop up separately some anchovies, parsley, chives, shallots and garlic, then mix them together in a bowl with oil, spread this mixture on toasted slices of bread three-eighths of an inch thick by three inches square; divide these slices through the center; lay some anchovy fillets on top. Dress the toast on a dish, pour over a little oil, and sprinkle with mignonette; push them into the oven for two minutes, then squeeze over the juice of an orange, and serve.

← No. 991 Florentine Toasts Hot Side Dishes No. 993 Varenikis—Polish Side Dish →

For the Modern Kitchen

Three savoury toasts from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), all built on the same idea: a hot oven used only long enough to warm the topping. Nothing here needs to cook, so the timing given is not an approximation to be rounded up.

Oven heatNo temperature is given; the oven here would have been a coal range's. For modern use a hot oven, in the region of 425-450F, or a broiler element does the job. The cheese toast wants seconds, the sardine toast "a few minutes," the Seville toast the two minutes stated.
MignonetteIn nineteenth-century kitchen French, mignonette is coarsely cracked white or black peppercorns, not the shallot-and-vinegar sauce now served with oysters. Crush the corns under a pan rather than grinding them fine.
AnchoviesRanhofer would have had salt-packed whole anchovies, which had to be rinsed, boned and filleted before pounding. Oil-packed fillets work directly; pound them with the butter and taste before adding any salt.
SardinesPeriod tinned sardines were sold whole in oil with skin and often bones intact, hence the instruction to wipe the skins off with a cloth. Modern skinless boneless fillets skip that step entirely; if you buy whole ones, the skin still slips away under a dry cloth.
BreadThree inches by one and a half is a finger of bread from a small close-crumbed loaf; the Seville toast specifies three-eighths of an inch thick, a shade under a standard slice. A firm white pain de mie holds oil without collapsing; open sourdough does not.
The oilThe bread is dipped in olive oil rather than buttered, and more oil is poured over the Seville toasts before baking. Use a fruity oil you would put on a salad, since it is barely heated and its flavour carries the dish.
Parmesan and lemonLemon juice goes on before the oven, so add it sparingly or the toast turns damp. Grate the parmesan finely enough that it melts in the few seconds allowed rather than sitting in dry shreds.
Orange, not lemonThe Seville toast is finished with orange juice squeezed over after baking. The name points at bitter Seville oranges; a regular navel orange is much sweeter, so a squeeze of blood orange or a mix of orange and lemon comes closer to the intended edge.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Count two to three toasts per person as a hot savoury or first course; the whole point is that they are served the instant they leave the oven, so cook in batches no larger than the table can eat.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole repertoire in a single volume of some 3,500 numbered entries. These toasts belong to the category of small hot savouries that a nineteenth-century restaurant kept on hand to fill out a service, and their kinship with the English savoury course, of which anchovy toast and Scotch woodcock are the best-known survivors, is clear enough. The Seville title refers to the bitter orange of southern Spain rather than to any particular Andalusian dish, and the combination of anchovy, garlic, shallot, parsley and oil is closer to the cooking of Provence than to Spanish cooking. Sardines and anchovies had become reliable pantry staples by the 1890s thanks to the French canning industry, which is why a chef of Ranhofer's standing could build a dish on a tin without apology.