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Stuffed Olives with Cheese
Stone carefully twelve queen olives. Place in a bowl half ounce cream or Neufchatel cheese, two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper, half teaspoon chopped parsley and one teaspoon anchovy essence. Mix well with a wooden spoon until a perfect paste and with it fill the twelve stoned olives. Place them on a hors d'oeuvres dish and serve.
A four-line hors d'oeuvre that depends entirely on proportion, and the proportions as printed are the part that needs attention.
- The filling quantity is too smallThe filling quantity is tight -- Half an ounce of cheese is roughly one tablespoon, which is barely enough for twelve large olives. Allow an ounce or so for a dozen queens and scale the seasonings with it.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of salt plus a quarter teaspoon of cayenne against a tablespoon of cheese is punishing; brined olives bring their own salt, so leave the added salt out until you have tasted the paste.
- Queen olivesSold today as Queen or Gordal, large green Spanish olives about an inch long. Whole olives you stone yourself hold their shape well, though pre-pitted ones can also be used.
- Stoning themCut a shallow spiral from stem to tip with a paring knife, ease the pit out, and the olive closes back on itself around the filling. A cherry pitter works on the firmer ones.
- Anchovy essenceA bottled concentrated anchovy seasoning of the Victorian store cupboard; equivalents are still sold in Britain as anchovy essence or anchovy sauce. Anchovy paste thinned with a few drops of water, or a mashed oil-packed fillet, does the same job.
- NeufchatelAmerican Neufchatel is a lower-fat cream cheese and behaves like cream cheese here. The French Neufchâtel AOP is a soft rind-ripened cheese and is not what this recipe means.
- FillingBring the cheese fully to room temperature and work it smooth before seasoning, then pipe it in with a small plain tip. A wooden spoon and a teaspoon will do it, less neatly.
- YieldTwelve olives serve two or three as part of a mixed hors d'oeuvres plate. They can be filled several hours ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator; serve at cool room temperature.
Stuffed olives belong to the era when the hors d'oeuvres tray was assembled from a dozen tiny cold items rather than cooked to order, a habit associated with the service styles of turn-of-the-century hotel dining. Anchovy essence is the marker of the period: a bottled fish seasoning descended from the eighteenth-century English taste for anchovy and ketchup flavourings, it turns up throughout Anglo-American cookery of the era wherever a savoury depth was wanted without stock. The pairing of a soft fresh cheese with anchovy and cayenne is the same logic that produced potted cheese and the Victorian "savoury" course served after the sweet.