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Lobster Canapé
Cut bread one half an inch thick into oblongs a half-inch wide, by three inches and a half long, spread them with mayonnaise, build them into a hollow square (Log Cabin fashion) using eight oblongs for each canapé, fill the center with diced lobster that has been mixed with mayonnaise.
Serve the canapés on lettuce leaves.
An assembly job rather than a cooking one: the whole thing stands or falls on bread that holds its shape and mayonnaise stiff enough to act as mortar.
- The hinge: firm, dry breadCut the oblongs from a close-crumbed white sandwich loaf that is a day old, or from a pain de mie. Fresh soft bread tears when spread and slumps once the mayonnaise soaks in, and the eight-piece wall will not stand.
- Reading the constructionEight oblongs most likely make a log-cabin box: two laid parallel as a base, two more across their ends, and so on for four courses of two, leaving an open well in the middle; two courses of four would also give a hollow square. The mayonnaise on each piece is the glue as much as the seasoning, so spread it on the contact faces, not just the tops.
- Size and yieldA half-inch-thick slice from a standard loaf yields roughly six to eight oblongs of the stated size, so plan on about one slice per canapé. Eight canapés is a reasonable course for four people as a first course, or a dozen for a cocktail tray.
- Mayonnaise consistencyThin bottled dressing will run down the walls. Use a thick mayonnaise, and if it seems slack, beat in a little more oil or fold in a spoonful of cream cheese for the pieces that do structural work.
- How much lobsterThe original gives no quantity. Figure about two tablespoons of diced meat per canape, so a pound of cooked lobster meat will fill upwards of a dozen. Cut the dice small, around a quarter inch, or the filling will not settle into the well.
- Lobster, then and nowA cook of the period would have boiled a live lobster or opened a can. Cooked picked meat from the fish counter works, but drain it well and blot it; wet lobster and mayonnaise together will soften the bread from the inside within minutes.
- Assemble late, keep coldMayonnaise-dressed shellfish should not sit at room temperature. Dice and dress the lobster, refrigerate it, and build the canapés no more than half an hour before serving; the bread walls will not survive longer than that anyway.
- The lettuceButterhead or the inner leaves of romaine, dry and crisp, cupped on the plate. A wet leaf will do to the underside of the canapé what the filling does to the inside.
The canapé is often associated with the era of the cocktail party, when hosts needed something that could be eaten standing up with one hand and looked like more work than it was, though the term is established in French and English cookery writing well before then. This one is pure architecture: a hollow square built log-cabin fashion, a trick that turns a little bread into a serving vessel and lets a modest amount of expensive shellfish read as abundance. Cold lobster in mayonnaise had been a fixture of American summer entertaining since the late nineteenth century, when rail transport and canning moved it inland from the New England coast, and it turns up constantly in books of this type because it requires no oven — a considerable virtue in a warm-weather menu written before air conditioning was common in the home.