Cheese Canapés
Cut stale bread in one-quarter inch slices, shape with small biscuit cutter (2 inches in diameter). Spread lightly with French or German mustard, sprinkle thickly with grated cheese, sprinkle cheese with finely chopped olives. Place a small stuffed olive in center of each. Dispose on a small plate covered with a paper doily. Garnish with sprays of parsley and serve as an "appetizer."
A cold canapé of the pre-cocktail-party era: no baking, no butter, just a firm bread round dressed and served at once. Everything depends on the bread and the cheese being dry enough to hold together.
- The hinge: assemble at the last minuteNothing here binds the cheese to the bread but mustard, and stale bread pulls moisture from both. Cut and cover the rounds within a half hour of serving or the topping slides off a limp base.
- Stale bread means dry, not oldA close-grained white sandwich loaf, a day or two old, cuts clean at a quarter inch. Modern soft supermarket bread tears; if that is all you have, dry the slices in a 300F oven for a few minutes and cool them fully before cutting.
- French or German mustardFrench mustard here most likely meant a smooth Dijon-style paste; German mustards of the period ranged from darker and coarser to distinctly sweet. Either works, but modern bright-yellow American mustard is a different, more vinegary animal and will dominate the cheese.
- The cheeseGrated cheese in an American book of this date generally means a dry aged cheddar, sold as "store cheese" or "American cheese" long before that name meant processed slices. Grate it fine on a rasp so it clings; pre-shredded cheese is coated in starch and sits on the surface.
- Stuffed olivesMost likely pimiento-stuffed green olives, though almond- and anchovy-stuffed olives were also sold in this period. Blot them and the chopped olives dry on a towel, or the brine will streak the cheese within minutes.
- YieldA standard sandwich loaf gives roughly 20 to 24 two-inch rounds. Figure three or four per person as a first bite before dinner.
- If you want them warmThe recipe is deliberately cold, but the same rounds run under a broiler for a minute or two, olives added after, make a better modern hors d'oeuvre. Save the trimmings for crumbs.
Canapé is the French word for a sofa or couch, borrowed into cookery for a piece of bread on which something is made to sit, and by the 1900s it had settled into American entertaining as the standard small savoury handed round before a meal. Elizabeth O. Hiller's 52 Sunday Dinners belongs to a moment when the formal appetizer course was filtering down from hotel dining rooms into middle-class households, and the instructions spend as much attention on the paper doily and the parsley sprays as on the food itself. Hiller also puts quotation marks around "appetizer." The dish the word introduces here is frankly economical, built on stale bread, grated scraps of cheese and olives.