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Montpelier Sandwich
Put three hard-boiled eggs and three boned anchovies in a mortar and pound fine; add one ounce of butter, and season with salt and cayenne pepper.
Place between thin slices of white bread cut in fancy shapes. Garnish with a sprig of parsley.
A tea sandwich built on a stripped-down beurre de Montpellier. The whole thing is a pounded paste, so texture is the only thing that can go wrong.
- One ounce of butterThat is 2 tablespoons, and it must be genuinely soft — room temperature, not melted. Melted butter will separate from the egg and leave the filling greasy rather than bound.
- Boned anchoviesThe book most likely means salt-packed whole anchovies, which in this period were commonly sold in kegs or tins and had to be rinsed and filleted. Three anchovy fillets in oil, blotted dry, are the direct substitute; if you use salt-packed, soak them 10 minutes and pat dry.
- Hold the saltThree anchovies to two tablespoons of butter is already assertive. Taste before adding any salt at all — the cayenne is the seasoning that actually needs your attention, and a pinch is plenty.
- The mortarA small food processor does this in ten seconds, but pulse rather than run it: the yolks turn pasty and the whites should stay in flecks. Overworked, the filling goes gluey and grey.
- Fancy shapesCut after filling, not before, so the edges stay sealed and the trimmings come away clean. A chilled loaf slices thinner; the filling spreads more easily if the sandwich is then pressed lightly and rested 10 minutes before cutting.
- YieldEnough for about six thin sandwiches, or a dozen small cut shapes — one plate for four people at tea.
- KeepingThe filling holds two days covered in the refrigerator and improves for a few hours as the anchovy works through the butter. Assembled sandwiches dry out fast; make them within an hour of serving and keep them under a damp cloth.
The name points to beurre de Montpellier, a green compound butter of the French repertoire made with blanched herbs, anchovy, capers, garlic and hard-cooked egg yolk, traditionally used to coat cold poached fish and generally said to take its name from the southern French city. Escoffier codified a version of it, and a sandwich book could borrow the name for a much-reduced descendant: egg, anchovy, butter, cayenne, with the herbs demoted to a sprig of parsley on the plate. Its appearance here belongs to the tea-sandwich vogue of the period, when thin crustless bread was cut into rounds, diamonds and hearts for afternoon calls, card parties and receptions, and when a savoury pounded paste was one way to stretch three eggs.