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Bedspreads
2 slices toasted buttered bread Paprika to taste 4 teaspoonfuls anchovy I paste 1¼ ozs. (2½ tablespoonfuls) butter Melt the butter; add one teaspoonful of the anchovy paste and the eggs lightly beaten. Stir and scramble the eggs, and add the oysters cut in small pieces; mix until the latter have been cooked, then pour over the toasted bread which has been spread with the remainder of the anchovy paste. Dust with paprika, and serve very hot.
A savoury of scrambled egg and oyster piled on anchovy toast, meant to be eaten the moment it leaves the pan. Two things decide whether it works: the heat under the eggs and how briefly the oysters stay in them.
- Missing quantitiesThe instructions call for eggs and oysters, but no amounts are given for either. Working back from the 4 teaspoons of anchovy paste and the butter, something like four eggs and six to eight shucked oysters would suit two slices of toast, but this is a reconstruction, not the original's figure.
- The butter measure1¼ oz is about 2½ tablespoons, as the original notes — roughly 35 g. That is a generous amount for four eggs and is what keeps them soft.
- Oysters go in last, and brieflyCut small and stirred into eggs that are already setting, they need well under a minute. Anything longer and they tighten into rubber and weep liquor into the eggs.
- Low heat throughoutThe recipe gives no heat setting, but eggs treated this way want gentle cooking. Keep the pan below a sizzle and pull it off while the curds still look slightly underdone; they carry on cooking on the way to the toast.
- Anchovy pasteTubed anchovy paste is still sold and is a reasonable substitute. It is salty enough that extra salt is unlikely to be needed; the recipe calls for none.
- ToastButter it and spread the remaining 3 teaspoons of anchovy paste while hot, then top immediately. Sitting toast goes soggy under wet eggs within a minute or two.
- YieldTwo slices, so two small servings as a savoury or one substantial breakfast.
Anchovy on hot buttered toast was a fixture of the British savoury course, the small salty dish served after the sweet at dinner or, more often by the twentieth century, at breakfast and supper. Gentleman's Relish and similar spiced anchovy pastes made the flavour available from a jar, and cooks piled scrambled egg on top to turn it into a proper dish. Adding oysters reflects a time when they were cheap enough to be treated as a seasoning rather than a luxury — chopped small and folded into eggs, curries and pies. This recipe's place among "Miscellaneous Recipes" marks it as the kind of quick chafing-dish cookery a hostess could produce at the table.