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Caviar Canapes
Wash the contents of a can of Russian caviar long and thoroughly under running water. Drain and serve, seasoned highly with lemon juice and red pepper, in cups formed of halves of the whites of hard-boiled eggs. Set on rounds of delicately fried bread and press the yolks through a sieve over the canapes after placing on the individual plates. Sardines, rubbed to a paste and a little parsley; or anchovies, with just a suspicion of mint, can be substituted for the caviar, if preferred.
A Brand New Sandwich Chop two good-sized cucumbers fine, add a little onion juice, a dash of red pepper and mix with as much mayonnaise dressing. This filling is dainty and makes a very "tasty" sandwich.-- Mrs E. H. Tichener.
A Club Sandwich Toast a slice of bread evenly and lightly and butter it. On one half put, first, a thin slice of bacon which has been broiled till dry and tender, next a slice of the white meat of either turkey or chicken. Over one half of this place a circle cut from a ripe tomato and over the other half a tender leaf of lettuce.
Cover these with a generous layer of mayonnaise, and complete this delicious "whole meal" sandwich with the remaining piece of toast.-A. W.
Three separate items are run together here, in the compressed style of a magazine reader-contribution column. The caviar instruction is the one that needs the most rethinking.
- Do not wash modern caviarRinsing "long and thoroughly under running water" made sense for the heavily salted, sometimes pressed canned caviar of 1900, which could be aggressively brined. Today's malossol (lightly salted) roe is delicate; water bursts the eggs and washes away the flavor you paid for. Drain off any excess liquid and leave it alone.
- "Russian caviar" todayThe tinned sturgeon roe assumed here is no longer a pantry staple. Wild sturgeon species are CITES-listed and beluga caviar cannot legally be imported into the United States; farmed sturgeon, or paddlefish, trout or lumpfish roe, is what the recipe now means in practice.
- Red pepperCayenne, ground fine, not paprika and not crushed chile flakes. A pinch is enough against the salt of the roe.
- Lemon and saltWith unwashed modern caviar, cut the lemon juice back to a few drops and add no salt. The original seasons "highly", presumably because the rinsing it calls for would have carried off much of the salt and flavour.
- The egg-white cupsHard-cook the eggs, halve lengthwise, and trim a sliver from the base of each white so it sits still on the bread. Eggs cooked 10 minutes and cooled in cold water peel cleanly and hold their shape; overcooked whites tear when you lift the yolk out.
- "Delicately fried bread"Rounds cut with a small cutter and fried in butter until pale gold, not brown. Cut them slightly wider than the egg halves. Fry them shortly before serving; they soften within the hour.
- YieldA 2 oz tin of roe will fill about a dozen egg-white halves, which is six eggs and a dozen bread rounds.
- The cucumber sandwichChopped cucumber leaks. Salt it lightly, let it drain in a sieve 20 minutes, then press dry before mixing with the mayonnaise, or the bread turns to paste. Onion juice means juice grated or pressed from an onion, not chopped onion.
- The club sandwichAs written this is a single slice of toast folded or cut in two, not the three-decker of later practice. If your mayonnaise is homemade with raw yolk, keep it cold and use it the same day.
This page shows a magazine cookbook doing what magazine cookbooks did: printing reader submissions, initials and all -- two of the three items are credited to correspondents, Mrs E. H. Tichener and 'A. W.'. The page reflects turn-of-the-century American enthusiasms: imported Russian caviar as the mark of a fashionable table, and the club sandwich, generally traced to the men's social clubs of the northeastern United States in the 1890s. Early printed versions such as this one use a single slice of toast rather than the tall triple-decker that hotel dining rooms later standardised. The word canape is French for sofa, describing the bread the garnish sits on, and the instruction to press hard-boiled yolk through a sieve over the finished plate is period garnishing practice; the same 'mimosa' effect appears over salads and aspics in books of this era. The casual suggestion that sardines or anchovies can stand in for caviar suggests the form mattered as much as the fish.