Tomato Canapé
Fry circles of bread, cut one-third inch thick, in deep hot Cottolene. Sauté slices of tomato in hot butter. Drain both on brown paper. Cover each circle of bread with a slice of tomato, sprinkle with salt, pepper and a few grains cayenne. Garnish each with a slice of cucumber and the white of "hard boiled" eggs, cut in the shape of petals to represent field daisies.
A hot-weather first course built on fried bread rather than toast, and finished as a piece of table decoration as much as food. It comes together quickly if the tomatoes are firm.
- CottoleneA brand of shortening made from cottonseed oil and beef suet, sold heavily in American kitchens from the 1890s onward and long discontinued. Any neutral frying oil works; a light olive oil gives better flavour with tomato.
- Frying the croutesBread cut a third of an inch thick wants oil at about 360F. Cut the circles with a 2 to 2.5 inch cutter, fry until pale gold on both sides, and drain. Paper towel replaces the brown paper.
- Choose the tomatoes carefullyThis is the hinge of the dish. Ripe slicing tomatoes collapse into pulp in the pan and soak the bread. Use firm, slightly underripe fruit, cut about half an inch thick, and sauté briefly over fairly high heat so the slices colour before they weep.
- Assemble at the last minuteFried bread stays crisp for only a few minutes under a hot, wet tomato. Fry, sauté and build in that order, and serve straight away.
- The daisy garnishSlice hard-boiled egg white into narrow petal shapes and lay them around the tomato. The original does not say where the cucumber slice sits; a daisy reading puts it at the centre. Only the white is called for, so the yolk is left over: keep it for a salad dressing or sieve it over the plate.
- Cayenne"A few grains" means exactly that, a pinch that sharpens the tomato rather than registering as heat.
- YieldThe original gives none. Reckon on one or two canapés a person as an opening course; a large loaf and three good tomatoes will make about twelve.
The canapé, from the French for a couch, is by definition something small seated on a base of bread, and in turn-of-the-century American cookery that base was as often fried as toasted. The use of Cottolene here places the page in a broad period: the N. K. Fairbank Company promoted its cottonseed-oil shortening hard through the 1890s and 1900s, and 52 Sunday Dinners was one of the cookbooks in which the product was named throughout as a matter of course. The elaborate garnish is equally of its period. Cookery of the era set great store by dishes that were arranged as much as cooked, and the field-daisy conceit of egg white petals around a cucumber centre belongs to the same tradition that gave the American table its radish roses and moulded aspic.