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Butters for Sandwiches
In making butters for sandwiches, first rub the butter to a cream; then blend with it the flavor wanted. Caviare, anchovy, sardine, cheese, lobster, parsley, chives, cress, chill and horse radish are all used.
A few olives, stoned and minced very fine, are an addition to anchovy sandwiches.
A method rather than a formula: the book assumes you know how much anchovy you want. A working ratio for all of these is 1 to 2 tablespoons of the flavouring, finely mashed or minced, to 4 oz (1 stick) of butter.
- Rub to a creamThis is the hinge. Butter at about 65F, worked with a wooden spoon or paddle until it is smooth and pale, will take up moist ingredients without weeping; cold butter will not, and melted butter separates. A stand mixer with the paddle does it in a minute.
- "Chill"Most likely a misprint for chili — cayenne or a minced fresh chile — rather than chervil or an instruction to refrigerate. If cayenne is used, a pinch per stick is enough to register.
- Anchovy and sardineUse oil-packed fillets mashed to a paste, or anchovy paste from a tube. Both are salty enough that unsalted butter is the better base, and no additional salt is needed.
- CaviareAt the time this was written the word often meant pressed or salted roe of sturgeon. Any salted roe works; fold it in at the last moment with a spatula rather than beating, or the eggs break and the butter turns grey.
- Lobster butterCooked tail and claw meat, chopped fine and pounded, gives a coarse spread; the classic French version pounds the shells with the butter, then strains, for colour and scent without texture.
- Herbs, cress and horseradishChives, parsley and cress should be chopped almost to a powder and squeezed dry in a towel, or the water they carry will make the butter grainy. Fresh grated horseradish is far sharper than bottled; taste before committing the whole quantity.
- Yield and keepingFour ounces of butter spreads roughly 12 to 16 thin sandwich slices. Roll the finished butter in parchment into a log; the herb and anchovy versions keep about a week refrigerated, the lobster and caviare ones only a day or two, and all slice from frozen.
Compound butters belong to the era when the sandwich moved from a labourer's dinner to a fixture of the tea table, the card party and the picnic hamper. Bread was sliced thin, crusts were trimmed, and the flavour was expected to come from the butter as much as from any filling. The beurres composés of professional kitchens are often said to lie behind the domestic practice. The list here is a fair inventory of what an ambitious household could buy in a tin or a jar: anchovy, sardine, and pressed caviare all travelled well, and sturgeon roe was still cheap enough to treat casually. It is worth noticing that the recipe gives no quantities at all. That is not carelessness but the convention of the genre; books of this period routinely set down a technique and left proportion to the cook's judgement, reserving exact weights for baking, where failure was less forgiving.