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CANAPES (a la Windsor)
Take two ounces of chicken or game, one ounce of lean cooked ham, one ounce of Parmesan cheese, three anchovies boned, two ounces of butter, and a sprinkling of salt and cayenne. Pound all together in a mortar, and pass through a wire or hair sieve. Have ready some small rounds of fried bread, spread the mixture thick on each round; sprinkle fine bread-crumbs on them, and place in a brisk oven for a few minutes. Serve very hot. Probable cost, 1s.
A savoury of the late Victorian dinner table: a potted-meat paste on fried bread, browned briefly and eaten hot. The whole thing takes fifteen minutes once the chicken and ham are cooked.
- The pounding stepA mortar and a hair sieve were the only way to get a smooth paste; a small food processor does it in thirty seconds. Sieving afterwards is only needed if the game has sinew or the anchovies leave fibres — pulse, taste, and skip the sieve if the texture is already fine.
- Brisk ovenRead that as roughly 400-425F. The mixture is already cooked, so the oven is only there to heat it through and colour the crumbs — three to five minutes at most, or a minute or two under a hot grill.
- Butter proportionTwo ounces of butter to four ounces of solids is deliberate: the butter is the binder that lets the paste spread thickly and keeps it from drying in the oven. Have it soft, not melted, or the paste will separate.
- AnchoviesThree Victorian salt-packed anchovies are saltier than three modern oil-packed fillets. Add the salt at the end, after tasting, and expect to need very little.
- ParmesanAn ounce is roughly a third to a half cup, depending how finely it is grated. Grate it fresh; the pre-grated tubs are drier and will make the paste grainy.
- GameAny cooked dark poultry works — leftover roast pheasant, duck, guinea fowl, or simply chicken thigh meat. Avoid breast alone, which is too dry to pound smooth.
- The fried breadCut rounds about 1½ inches across from day-old bread and fry in clarified butter or oil until crisp on both sides, then drain well. Damp or greasy bases go soft the moment the paste is spread. They can be fried hours ahead.
- YieldThe quantities make about three-quarters of a cup of paste, enough to top perhaps 12-18 small rounds. Serve straight from the oven; the paste is dull once cool.
The savoury was a fixture of the formal English dinner, served after the sweet course and before dessert, and it was expected to be small, salty and hot — anchovy, cheese and potted meat on toast in endless permutations. Canapé is the French for a couch or sofa, and cooks are generally said to have borrowed it for the piece of bread that a garnish sits upon. Dishes named à la Windsor in Victorian cookery books appear to carry no fixed formula and no documented royal connection, the name being applied loosely to preparations thought suitably rich or English. The technique is the same pounding that produced potted ham, potted game and the anchovy butters of the period, all of which served to use up small quantities of cooked meat.