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Canapis à la Turbigo
(Rolls stuffed with Prawns.) Ingredients.
Four small Rolls (farthing rolls).
Ten Prawns or six Crayfish tails.
One small head of Celery.
A few mixed Pickles.
A little Aspic Jelly.
Hard-boiled whites of Eggs.
Two small Truffles.
A spoonful of Tomato Juice.
The book gives the ingredients and nothing else, which was normal in professional manuals of this period: the cook was expected to know how a stuffed roll is built. What follows fills in the vocabulary and the assumptions.
- There is no method hereThe entry lists quantities only. Anyone making this is reconstructing the assembly from the ingredients, not following instructions, so treat it as a specification rather than a recipe to be worked through step by step.
- Farthing rollsA small roll sold for a farthing, at the cheap end of the bread trade, roughly the size of a modern dinner roll. For a dish of this kind the rolls would be hollowed out and the shell filled. Four rolls suggests four portions, one each.
- Canapé in 1900Canapé -- the word normally means the flat bread base we mean today, but here the title sits over an ingredient list for stuffed rolls, so the bread is evidently serving as a case rather than a flat cracker.
- Prawns and crayfish tailsTen prawns of the small old English sort yield very little meat once peeled; six crayfish tails give more. Modern cooked, peeled cold-water prawns are the closest equivalent, with the quantity judged by eye against the four rolls.
- Aspic jellyClarified savoury jelly, used here to bind the filling and glaze the top so it holds its shape at the buffet. A strong reduced stock set with leaf gelatine does the same job; the amount is left to judgement because it depends on how loose the filling is.
- Truffles and egg whiteLargely decorative. Thin discs of black truffle and hard-boiled egg white cut into rounds or crescents were a common garnish of the period, set under a layer of aspic. A black olive or a caper gives the same visual punctuation.
- Mixed pickles and tomato juiceThe pickles would be chopped fine into the filling for sharpness. "Tomato juice" means juice pressed from fresh tomatoes for colour and acidity, not the canned drink.
- Serve coldThis is a cold savoury, meant to come at the end of dinner or on a supper table. Everything is assembled ahead and kept cool until the aspic is firm.
Nineteenth-century kitchen French named garnishes after battles, and Turbigo commemorates the engagement of June 1859 in Lombardy, fought during the Franco-Austrian war that also gave the repertoire Magenta and Solferino. The classic Turbigo garnish, generally traced to that moment, is chipolata sausages and mushrooms with a tomato-tinged sauce. The dish belongs to the savoury course, a peculiarly British institution in which a small salty item arrived after the sweet, and it shows the late-Victorian cook's habit of turning a penny bread roll into a display piece with aspic, truffle and cut egg white.