Scotch Woodcock

Bécasse à l’Écossaise (Scotch Woodcock, anchovy-and-caper toast) teaches the discipline of the glaze. The topping must be finished before it meets the bread, because the fierce final heat is there to bronze the Parmesan, not to thicken a loose sauce. Get that one truth into your hands and the dish becomes wonderfully direct.

The grand kitchen assumed a saucier with Sauce au Beurre à l’Anglaise (English butter sauce) already made, a stockpot never off the fire for the sauces that required it, and a salamander glowing above the finishing station. This particular sauce needs water, not stock, and tonight its honest equivalents are one small saucepan and your grill or broiler on its top shelf. The prepared sauce and dedicated station were brigade scaffolding, so they go. What stays, because it is the dish, is toast cut one-third inch thick, very thick butter sauce, plenty of capers and anchovy purée, Parmesan, a rapid glaze, and immediate cutting. Only the quantity and equipment have changed.

When it is right, each rectangle has a dry, crisp base under a thick ivory layer, salty with anchovy, bright with capers, and blistered bronze on top. Before you switch from saucepan to grill, make certain the sauce holds a clean ridge from the whisk. That thickness is the step that matters most. One cook, one stove, one evening.