Culinary jottings

VJ^TO disli is more thoroughly useful, or more generally •!Jl\ |N popular, than the savoury toast. It is a kind of thing that can frequently be made at a pinch, Avhen the larder is all but empty, and a hungry friend drops in unexpectedly. A dainty feeder will sometimes fancy it when he will scarcely look at anything in the way of food. If well made, it serves as a finish to a little home dinner, and it is equally acceptable at breakfast, luncheon, or supper. In its composition tasty scraps of all kinds can be used up successfully, without any great effort on the part of the cook, or loss of time. In common with almost every branch of cookery, this offshoot of the science is susceptible of elaborate, as well as of simple treatment ; and may be fashioned to obey the dictates of extravagance as well as those of the strictest economy. Yet, generally speaking, savoury toasts of an ordinary kind ought to be favourably regarded by all thrifty house-keepers, inasmuch as they afford an easy and pleasant way of working up fragments of good food that might otherwise be wasted. The rules of toast-making are few, and very simple : — 1. — Unless sj^ecially stated to the contrary in the recipe, the slice of bread destined to receive any savoury compo- sition should be delicately /rzeti in butter till of a golden colour, rather than toasted in the ordinary manner. If SAVOURY TOASTS. 223 kept waiting at all, ordinarily toasted bread becomes spongy or sodden, and soon loses its crisj^ness. The easy process of toasting too, is frequently slurred over carelessly, and the bread is scorched, not toasted. If you watch a native servant in the act of toasting, you will generally find that he places the slice of bread as close to the glowing embers as possible. Setting aside the risk that the bread thus incurs of catching a taint of gas from the live char- coal, it cannot be evenly and delicEitely browned, neither can it attain that thorough crispness which is a sine quel non in properly made toast. The slice of bread must be kept some little distance from the clear embers, being gradually heated through, crisped, and lightly and evenly browned by degrees. But, as I said before, bread fried in good butter is better, with a very few exceptions, than toasted bread for the sort of dishes we are going to discuss. 2. — A Savoury toast is not worth serving unless it be piping hot : it may be kept hot in the oven, to be sure, but it is never so good as when set before the hungry guest the moment it has been completed. In order to ensure this ' slickness' (to borrow a trans-Atlantic term) let the cook be warned to have everything ready, but not actually to finish off the making of his toast till it is wanted. It is better to keep the table waiting for three or four minutes for a bonne-bouche, than to serve immediately such a miser- able fiasco as a cold toast. The next thing to consider is the composition of a savoury toast, which I will endeavour to describe in a series of recipes. Let us commence with our time-honoured friend : — Anchovy toast. If you have a tin of anchovies in oil, the process is this : — Take six anchovies, wipe them free from oil, split them open, remove the spines, and pass the fish through your hair sieve : put the pulp in a bowl, and stir into it the yolks of two raw eggs. Cut four nice 224 CULINARY yOTTIXGS FOR MADRAS.