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Canapé of Purée De Foie Gras
Cut white bread into half-inch slices, spread with butter and purée de foie gras. Cut into oblongs one and a half by three inches. Decorate with narrow strips of green pepper.
A cocktail-hour canapé that lives or dies on the quality of the spread and the neatness of the cuts. The instructions assume a pullman loaf and a tin of purée that most cooks of the period kept in the cupboard.
- The bread is the hingeHalf-inch slices of soft white bread cut into clean oblongs only if the crumb is firm and slightly stale. Chill or briefly freeze the slices before trimming, cut the shapes first, then spread — you get sharp edges and no compressed, buttery mess.
- Purée de foie grasThis meant a tinned or potted spreadable preparation, not a whole lobe. A duck or goose liver mousse or pâté de foie gras from a good deli is the direct equivalent; it should be soft enough to spread without tearing the bread, so leave it at room temperature for 15 minutes.
- Sourcing todayFoie gras production is banned or restricted in a number of jurisdictions, and its sale has been restricted in California, with bans legislated in other places. A well-made duck liver mousse or a smooth chicken liver pâté stands in without changing the character of the canapé.
- Butter first, and for a reasonThe butter layer is not decorative — it seals the crumb so the purée does not soak in and the canapé does not go limp on the tray. Spread it thin and right to the edges.
- Green pepper stripsCut narrow ribbons from a green bell pepper with a paring knife, skin side up, no more than an eighth of an inch wide. Blanching them for 30 seconds and drying well brightens the colour and takes off the raw edge.
- YieldA standard sandwich loaf slice, trimmed of crust, gives two oblongs of this size; figure a dozen canapés from six slices and about 6 oz of purée. Count three or four per guest alongside other items.
- HoldingAssemble no more than an hour ahead, cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap, and refrigerate. Foie gras preparations soften quickly at room temperature and the pepper strips bleed if they sit overnight.
The canapé — the name is usually explained as French for a sofa or couch, the bread being the seat on which the garnish sits — was a staple opening gesture of American entertaining from the 1920s through the 1950s, and books of this kind supplied many variations built on the same buttered rectangle. Purée de foie gras of this sort came tinned or potted, which is much of why it appears here: imported potted goose and duck liver was one of the few genuinely luxurious ingredients a hostess could keep on a shelf and produce at short notice. The measured oblongs, one and a half by three inches, suggest a cook working to a plan, with every item cut to size so the finished platter read as a pattern rather than a pile.