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Made Mustard
Cut twelve slices of thin brown. bread and butter, stamp them out with a heart-shaped cutter about one and a half inches long. Mix a few drops of lemon juice with the caviare, using a wooden spoon (one of the flat ones is the best), add a teaspoonful of chopped shalot and a little cayenne. Mix a teaspoonful of mayonnaise and one of cold Béchamel sauce together, stir in the yolk of hard-boiled egg previously rubbed through a sieve, and half a teaspoonful each of chopped parsley, fennel, tarragon, and shalot, also the same quantity of mustard and thick tomato purée; work all this thoroughly well together. Spread the caviare on the pieces of bread and butter, and with a paper cornet ornament these slices with this mixture. Dish up on small round dishes, and place in the cool until wanted.
A late-Victorian caviare canapé, filed here under a title that clearly belongs to another entry — a common casualty of typesetting in books of this kind. Nothing in the method is difficult; the work is in the garnish, and in keeping everything cold.
- The title is not the dishThe heading reads "Made Mustard" but the instructions describe caviare hearts on brown bread and butter. Mustard appears only as half a teaspoonful in the piped garnish. Read it as a canapé recipe.
- Quantity of caviareThe original never says how much. Twelve slices will give several hearts each, depending on the size of the loaf, so judge the amount by what will spread thinly rather than by a fixed weight. Modern sturgeon caviare is expensive enough that trout or lumpfish roe is the practical substitute.
- ShalotShallot, and the recipe uses it twice — a teaspoonful in the caviare and another half-teaspoonful in the piped mixture. Chop it to a near-paste so it does not read as raw onion against the roe.
- FennelThe herb, not the bulb: the feathery green fronds, chopped fine like the parsley and tarragon. Fennel bulb was not the usual British greengrocer's item in this period.
- Cold BéchamelA teaspoonful of cold Béchamel is worked into the mayonnaise here; the recipe does not say why. It must be properly cold and stiff, or the piped decoration will slump. A thick, cooled white sauce made with milk, butter and flour is all that is meant.
- Paper cornetA cone rolled from greaseproof or parchment with the tip snipped off. A small piping bag with a fine plain or star tube does the same job; the mixture needs to be thick enough to hold a line.
- Wooden spoon for the caviareNot fussiness. Metal was believed to taint roe, and the flat wooden spatula also lets you fold the lemon juice through without crushing the eggs.
- Raw egg in the mayonnaiseIf you make the mayonnaise yourself, use pasteurised eggs, since these are served cold and uncooked. The sieved yolk in the garnish should come from a hard-boiled egg.
- Holding and serving"Place in the cool" means a larder; use the refrigerator, covered, and serve within a few hours. Bread and butter under a wet topping goes soft quickly, so assemble as late as you reasonably can.
Caviare canapés belong to the Anglo-French hors d'oeuvre service that took hold in British country houses and hotel dining rooms in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when a professional kitchen was expected to open a long dinner with a tray of small, cold, highly seasoned mouthfuls. The vocabulary here is professional kitchen French — Béchamel, purée, cornet — though terms such as Béchamel are much older than Escoffier's generation, applied to the very English base of brown bread and butter, a common partner to caviare in Britain. Sturgeon roe reached London from Russia and the Caspian, and its expense may be part of why it was spread thinly over small stamped shapes rather than served by the spoonful. The piped garnish of sieved yolk, chopped herbs, mustard and tomato purée is doing the same sort of work as the fluted borders on a chaud-froid: a demonstration of hand skill, meant to be looked at before it is eaten.