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Caviare with Prawns
Stamp out eight rounds of stale bread about one and a half inches in diameter, fry in butter to a light brown colour, drain, and put them to cool. Put two ounces of Russian caviare in a basin with a few drops of lemon-juice, and half a shallot finely chopped. Stir all together with a wooden spoon, adding a sprinkling of cayenne. Cut eight thin slices of lemon, place one on each of the bread croutes, put a tea-spoonful of caviare on each of them. Put half a stoned olive in the centre and a picked prawn on each side of every croute. Serve up on a round glass dish, and ornament with parsley and a few prawns' heads. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
A savoury of eight canapés, assembled rather than cooked. The only heat involved is frying the bread, and everything else depends on the quality of what goes on top.
- Fry the croutes properly dryStale bread is specified because fresh bread soaks up butter and collapses under the topping. Fry in clarified butter or a butter-oil mix over moderate heat, drain on paper, and cool completely before building — a warm croute will slacken the caviare.
- Size and yieldEight rounds of an inch and a half make eight one-bite canapés, which is a savoury course for four at most, or a small pass-round with drinks. Scale up by simple multiplication.
- Two ounces of caviareThat is about 55 g, or roughly four tablespoons, which works out at a teaspoon per croute with a little left over. The recipe specifies Russian caviare; lumpfish or trout roe will substitute, though the shallot, cayenne and lemon are assertive enough that a fine sturgeon roe would arguably be lost under them.
- Stirring the roeA wooden spoon and a light hand — the point is to fold the lemon juice and shallot through, not to crush the eggs. Mix immediately before serving, since salt and acid draw liquid out of the roe and the mixture weeps if it stands.
- "Picked prawn"Prawns were usually bought ready-boiled, and picking means shelling them out of their shells and heads. Use cooked, peeled cold-water prawns, two per croute as the recipe directs, and keep the heads for the garnish it asks for.
- The lemon sliceCut the slices paper-thin and trim them to the diameter of the croute, or they overhang and drip.
- CayenneA sprinkling means the barest dusting from the tip of a knife. Caviare is already salty, and the strength of ground cayenne varies; taste as you go.
- Assemble lateFried croutes can be made hours ahead and kept airtight, but the finished canapés should be built no more than fifteen minutes before serving or the bread softens from beneath.
This belongs to the savoury, the small sharp course that closed a formal English dinner between the sweet and the dessert fruit — anchovy toasts, devilled kidneys, mushrooms on toast, and, at the expensive end, caviare. Russian caviare is generally said to have reached British tables in greater quantity through the late nineteenth century, travelling salted in barrels and on ice, and its arrival in a general-purpose household dictionary like Cassell's shows how far down the social scale the ingredient had travelled by then, though the "probable cost" of 2s 6d for eight small croutes was still a substantial sum for a single course. The construction — fried bread base, a dab of something salty, a decorative olive and a symmetrical garnish — is the standard grammar of the period's cold savouries and canapés, and the instruction to serve on a round glass dish with prawns' heads for ornament is a reminder that these dishes were judged at least as much by their appearance on the sideboard as by their taste.