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Sardellen Canapes
Toast a thin biscuit cracker and lightly butter.
Put a slice of hard-boiled egg in the centre and coil one well cleaned sardellen around the egg. Garnish with a slice of lemon.
A three-ingredient canapé that depends entirely on the quality of the anchovy and on restraint with salt. Everything here is assembly; the only cooking is the toasting and the egg.
- SardellenGerman for anchovies, specifically the whole salt-cured fillets sold packed in barrels or tins of salt. "Well cleaned" means rinsing off the packing salt, splitting the fish, and lifting out the backbone and fins. Modern oil-packed anchovy fillets are already boned and much milder; drain and blot them and skip the soaking.
- Salt-packed fishIf you use true salt-cured whole anchovies, soak them 20-30 minutes in cold water or milk, changing the water once, or the canapé will be inedibly salty. Taste one before you commit.
- Thin biscuit crackerA plain unsweetened water biscuit or cracker of the Carr's type, not a sweet biscuit in the British sense. The recipe says only "toast" and specifies no method; a brief spell in a moderate oven until dry and just coloured works, and butter while warm so it sets rather than soaks.
- The eggA slice cut from the middle of the egg shows the yolk as a full circle, though the recipe does not specify. Start eggs in cold water, bring to a boil, cover and leave off the heat 10 minutes, then chill; a wet knife or an egg slicer keeps the yolk from crumbling.
- CoilingA rinsed fillet is limp enough to curl around the egg slice without breaking. If it fights you, warm it a moment in the hand or lay it briefly in a little olive oil.
- ButterButter here works as a sealant against the moisture of the egg as much as a flavouring. A butter worked with a little lemon zest is one option, though with a salt-cured fish on top plain butter is the safer choice.
- Assembly timeBuild these within an hour of serving. The cracker goes soft and the egg white weeps once the salt from the fish starts working on it.
- YieldThe original gives none. One anchovy fillet and one egg slice per canapé; a hard-boiled egg yields five or six usable centre slices, and a dozen canapés is a reasonable tray for six people alongside other savouries.
The German name is suggestive: Sardellen is the standard word for anchovies in German and Austrian cookery, and German and Swiss-German chefs were numerous in American hotel and club kitchens, though French-trained and French-styled kitchens were the prestige model. Salted anchovies were then a staple pantry item, sold whole from the barrel by grocers and used as much for anchovy butter, anchovy paste and sauces as they were eaten straight. Canapés of this kind — a toasted base, a bound centre, a coil of something salt-cured, a token of lemon — belonged to the ordered vocabulary of the buffet and the card party. The pairing of anchovy with hard-boiled egg is old and durable: the salt cuts the yolk, the yolk cushions the salt, and the same logic underlies everything from Salade Niçoise to Scandinavian egg-and-anchovy open sandwiches.