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Tartines of Oysters
Cut six slices from a loaf of sandwich bread, each a quarter-inch thick, toast to a light golden colour; trim neatly. Mix a tablespoon anchovy essence with a tablespoon butter and spread evenly over the six toasts. Plunge twenty-four large, freshly opened oysters in a pint boiling water for two minutes; drain on a sieve, place on a board. Season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and one teaspoon French mustard. Finely chop them, divide the hash proportionately over the six toasts, neatly smooth the surface with the blade of a knife. Sprinkle two tablespoons fresh bread crumbs over them. Divide a light teaspoon butter on top of the tartines, place in a tin and set in oven to bake for eight minutes. Remove and serve.
A savoury of the old European kind — anchovy toast under chopped oysters, browned briefly. The whole thing hinges on not overcooking the shellfish.
- Two minutes means two minutesThe oysters get only a brief blanch, then are chopped and given eight more minutes in the oven. Longer in the boiling water and they toughen before they ever reach the toast.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given in the recipe. A hot oven (in the region of 425-450F) will colour the crumbs within the eight minutes rather than letting the oysters stew.
- A saltspoonRoughly a quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of cayenne across six toasts is genuinely fiery by modern taste; start with half that and adjust.
- Anchovy essenceA thin Victorian bottled sauce of salted anchovy, now uncommon on shelves though still made. Anchovy paste from a tube works, though it is thicker and saltier -- use about two teaspoons mashed into the tablespoon of butter, and cut the added salt accordingly.
- French mustardDijon, smooth rather than grainy. It is stirred into the seasoned oysters before chopping, so it disperses through the hash.
- The bread"Sandwich bread" means a fine-crumbed white pan loaf. A quarter-inch is thinner than most machine slices; cut from an unsliced loaf if you can, since a thick slab goes leathery under the wet topping.
- Oyster sizeThe recipe specifies twenty-four large oysters for six toasts. With small oysters you will need more to cover the same ground.
- YieldSix tartines, meant as a savoury course or an appetiser for six. Serve immediately — they soften within minutes of leaving the oven.
Tartine is simply the French word for a slice of bread spread with something, and this dish sits in the long Anglo-French tradition of the savoury: a small, sharply seasoned hot morsel served near the end of a formal dinner, after the sweet, often with the port. Anchovy and cayenne on toast is the backbone of that whole family of dishes — devilled sardines, anchovy toast itself — and oysters are the next step in an era when oysters were still cheap and sold by the barrel in most Atlantic port cities. That abundance is worth remembering: a recipe could call for two dozen large oysters to garnish six pieces of toast without anyone thinking it extravagant.