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Canapes A La Bismarck
Fry small cubes of stale bread in butter until brown, spread over each when cold a layer of anchovy butter, curl around each an anchovy well washed, boned and trimmed; sprinkle very finely shredded olives over them. Anchovy butter is made of two parts butter and one of anchovy paste.
A cold hors d'oeuvre built on a fried bread base; nothing here needs cooking beyond the croutons, so the work is in seasoning and assembly.
- Let the croutons cool completelyThe instruction to spread the butter "when cold" is the hinge. Anchovy butter on a warm crouton melts, soaks in and leaves a greasy base that collapses under the fish. Fry the cubes, drain them on paper, and give them fifteen minutes.
- Cube sizeThe recipe says only "small cubes"; something around 3/4 inch works, big enough to pick up and small enough for one bite. Cut from a firm white loaf a day or two old; the recipe specifies stale bread, and fresh bread absorbs butter and turns to sponge.
- Anchovy butter proportionsTwo parts butter to one of anchovy paste (the recipe does not say whether by volume or weight) is aggressively salty by current tastes. Softened butter mashed with paste at 3:1 or 4:1 is closer to modern palates, and a squeeze of lemon lifts it.
- Anchovy paste todayTubed anchovy paste is still sold and works directly. Alternatively pound oil-packed fillets to a smooth paste with a fork; four or five per 4 tablespoons of butter gives the milder ratio suggested above rather than the recipe's 2:1.
- Washing the anchoviesThis assumes salt-packed anchovies, which genuinely need rinsing and boning. Oil-packed fillets from a tin are already trimmed; just blot the oil off so they do not slide off the bread.
- Shredded olivesThe recipe says only "very finely shredded olives"; green olives in brine, cut in very fine julienne rather than chopped, suit it. Pat them dry before scattering or they will weep onto the butter.
- Yield and timingA 4-tablespoon batch of anchovy butter dresses about 20 to 24 canapés. Assemble within an hour of serving — the bread softens quickly once the butter is on it.
Dishes labelled à la Bismarck proliferated across European and American menus from the later nineteenth century onward, riding the German chancellor's celebrity; the name attached to little more than a loose family of preparations involving salted or pickled fish, and in some kitchens a fried egg laid on top. Bismarck herring, the vinegar-cured fillet still sold under that name in Germany, is the best-known survivor of the fashion. What holds this version together is the anchovy, which reached the turn-of-the-century American pantry in several forms, bottled paste and essence among them, and was a standard way of getting savory depth into cold savouries. The canapé itself belongs to the late-Victorian and Edwardian habit of serving small toasted or fried bread bases before dinner or with the savoury course, a formal position on the menu that has since dissolved into general appetizer territory.