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Anchovy Canapé
Cut white bread into quarter-inch slices and shape into rounds with a cooky-cutter, or a thin glass tumbler. Spread lightly with butter and then with anchovy paste. Edge with a border of the white of a hard-boiled egg chopped fine and place in the center a mound of the powdered yolk of the egg.
A cold canapé that depends entirely on neat cutting and restraint with the anchovy paste. Nothing here needs updating except proportions and a few assumptions about the pantry.
- The breadQuarter-inch slices of a firm white sandwich loaf hold their shape; airy modern bakery bread tears under a cutter. A 1.5–2 inch round cutter gives a one-bite canapé, and the trimmings toast well for crumbs.
- Toast or notThe recipe leaves the bread untoasted, which means it must be assembled close to serving or it goes limp. Drying the rounds in a 300F oven for eight to ten minutes, then cooling them, gives a base that survives an hour on the tray.
- Anchovy pasteTubed anchovy paste is still sold and is what is meant here. It is aggressively salty, so spread it thin over the butter rather than mixing the two; a scant quarter teaspoon per round is plenty. Mashed anchovy fillets work if you slacken them with a little of the butter.
- Butter first, alwaysButter first -- The butter works mainly as a moisture barrier between the bread and the paste. Have it properly soft and take it right to the edge of each round.
- Powdered yolk"Powdered" here means the cooked yolk pushed through a fine sieve so it falls in light crumbs. Rubbing it through a tea strainer with the back of a spoon is quicker than chopping.
- EggsOne hard-boiled egg dresses roughly a dozen small rounds. Cool the eggs thoroughly before separating; a warm white smears rather than chopping cleanly.
- Yield and serviceA loaf yields around thirty rounds depending on cutter size. Count two or three per person as a cocktail savoury, and serve within an hour of assembly.
The canapé takes its name from the French for a sofa. Anchovy was a standard savoury note: shelf-stable, intensely salty, and long associated in English and American cookery with anything meant to sharpen the appetite or accompany a drink. The chopped white and sieved yolk border is a common garnish of the period — the same treatment is sometimes called mimosa, for its resemblance to the blossom — and it appears in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cookbooks on everything from aspics to salads.