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Cheese Canapes
1 cup grated cheese 1/4 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne 6 slices of bread Cut the bread into circular pieces, sprinkle with a thick layer of grated cheese, season with salt and pepper; place on a baking sheet and bake in the oven or under the gas flame until cheese is melted. Serve at once.
A one-line canapé that depends almost entirely on the bread and the cheese. The original gives no oven temperature and no size, so both need deciding before you start.
- Oven settingNo temperature is given. A hot oven, 425F, melts the cheese before the bread dries out; the broiler (the book's "gas flame") does it in 2 to 3 minutes and is closer to the intent. Watch it rather than timing it.
- The breadCut rounds with a 1.5 to 2 inch cutter from bread sliced a little thicker than sandwich bread, about 1/2 inch. Modern soft sandwich loaves collapse under melted cheese, so toast or dry the rounds on one side first.
- CheeseThe recipe names no cheese. An unspecified "grated cheese" in an American cookbook of this sort would most likely have been a firm dry cheese of the Cheddar or factory-cheese type. Aged Cheddar, Gruyere or a Cheddar-Parmesan mix all work; fresh mozzarella releases too much water.
- Salt and pepperThe ingredient list calls for cayenne, the method says pepper. Use the cayenne, and go light on the salt if the cheese is well aged.
- YieldSix slices give roughly 12 to 18 rounds depending on your cutter, enough for four to six people as a first course. Save the trimmings for crumbs.
- Serving"Serve at once" is the whole trick. Cheese on toast turns leathery within a few minutes of leaving the heat, so bake in batches timed to the table rather than holding them warm.
Canape is French for a sofa or couch, applied by extension to a small piece of bread that a savory topping sits on, and the word appears in American cookbooks by around the turn of the twentieth century along with the fashion for French-styled service. The instruction to bake "in the oven or under the gas flame" suggests a period when gas ranges with an overhead broiler were common enough to be worth mentioning, and the recipe belongs to a family of thrifty cheese-and-bread dishes alongside Welsh rabbit and cheese straws.