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Smoked Sturgeon Canapé
Cut stale white bread in one-third inch slices, trim off crust and cut slices in crescents or triangles - then sauté a golden brown in butter. Spread with Anchovy paste or with French mustard, then arrange flaked smoked sturgeon over canapés. Sprinkle thickly with finely chopped olives and pimentos. Garnish each with a rolled fillet of Anchovy. Dispose each canapé on a bread and butter plate covered with a paper doily and garnish with sprays of parsley.
A straightforward assembly job in which nothing is cooked but the bread. The quality rests entirely on the fish and on frying the croûtes properly.
- The croûtes are the hingeStale bread is specified because fresh bread soaks up butter and turns greasy and limp. Cut the slices a full third of an inch, fry in clarified butter over medium heat until dry and crisp through, and drain on paper before topping. Soggy bases collapse under the fish.
- Smoked sturgeon todayWild sturgeon are protected under CITES and most domestic species are off limits; what is sold now is farmed, usually hot-smoked and sold in loins or flakes at appetizing counters. Cold-smoked sable, smoked whitefish or smoked trout all work in the same role.
- French mustardAt the time this meant a smooth Dijon-style mustard as against the hot English kind, not a modern honey-mustard blend. A thin scrape is enough — the anchovy paste alternative is considerably saltier, so pick one, not both.
- PimentosJarred pimentos are simply skinned, cooked sweet red peppers. Drain and blot them dry before chopping or the moisture will run into the fried bread.
- Anchovy filletsAnchovies were often sold salt-packed then, and saltier than the oil-packed tins usual now. If using salt-packed, rinse and pat dry before rolling; oil-packed need only draining.
- Quantity and yieldThe original gives no amounts. Figure a half-pound of smoked fish, a small jar of pimentos and about a dozen slices of bread for roughly 24 canapés — two or three per person as a first course.
- Assemble at the last minuteFry the croûtes up to a few hours ahead and hold them uncovered at room temperature. Once topped they should go to the table within about fifteen minutes.
Sturgeon was still a genuinely American luxury when this book was compiled by Elizabeth O. Hiller: the Delaware and Hudson rivers had supported a large commercial fishery through the late nineteenth century, and the flesh — known in the Hudson region as "Albany beef" — was cheap enough to be a working-class food before overfishing for roe collapsed the stocks. By the 1910s it had turned scarce and expensive, and here it appears on a Sunday menu, cut small and served on doilied bread-and-butter plates. The canapé itself belongs to the Anglo-American adoption of French service, where a fried or toasted bread base, an anchovy or mustard spread, and a scattering of chopped garnish were the standard grammar; the parsley sprays and the paper doily are as much a part of the recipe as the fish.