Alice Bradley’s anchovy savories, which she calls canapes.

In 1922, Alice Bradley, then the influential successor to Fanny Farmer at the Boston Cooking School, published a small book of straightforward recipes called For Luncheon and Supper Guests. It was popular: Five years later the cookbook already had enjoyed six print runs. Many of its recipes, including this extremely simple one, reflect a distinctly British cast, something unsurprising given the stature of Boston as the most Anglophile city on the east coast of the United States.

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• 2 hardboiled eggs
• 8 slices bread with crusts removed
• unsalted butter
• anchovy paste

1. Mash the yolks and chop the whites of the eggs.
2. Butter the slices of bread on one side and fry the buttered side over medium low heat until golden.
3. Remove the fried bread from the pan and smear the naked side of each slice with a film of anchovy.
4. Cut each slice of bread into three lengths and distribute the egg evenly among them.

Notes:

In some respects Bradley is bizarre. She cooks her eggs in a double boiler over a rolling boil for a solid hour and opens a can of pimiento at the merest provocation, including her, where she adds some of the prepared pepper to the savory with the egg. She also tends to infest her food with paprika.