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Salt and Pepper (Tarragon and Chervil a few)
Tarragon and Chervil, a few spoonfuls of each.
Quarter of a pound of cooked Ox-tongue or Ham.
One large Tomato.
Oil, Vinegar and chopped Parsley.
Cut some small square slices of brown bread about one and a half inches square. Stamp out to a neat shape with a cutter. Pound the following ingredients in a mortar: -Two ounces of cooked white meat, two yolks of eggs, one ounce of butter, finely chopped tarragon, chervil, and parsley; moisten with a tablespoonful of Béchamel sauce. Season to taste, and pass through a sieve.
Butter the pieces of bread slightly; spread each over with a thin layer of paste; cut some fancy slices of ham or tongue a trifle smaller than the bread. Place one on each slice of bread. Have ready a tomato cut up rather small; season with oil, vinegar, parsley, salt, and pepper; put a small heap on the centre of each slice; put a tarragon -leaf crossways on the top.
Work up the remainder of paste, put it in a paper cornet, and ornament the sides of each slice with same, and dish up.
The hard-boiled whites of eggs can be chopped finely and used for garnishing the dish if desired.
Bombe de Peche en Surprise.
Ingredients.
A cold canapé of the Edwardian savoury course: a herb-and-tongue butter on brown bread, capped with dressed tomato. The recipe as printed runs its ingredient list into the title and trails off into the header of the next recipe (Bombe de Pêche en Surprise), which belongs to the following page.
- The egg yolks are hard-boiledThe paste calls for "two yolks of eggs" and later suggests the chopped whites as garnish, which only makes sense if the eggs were boiled. Use two hard-boiled yolks; raw yolks would give a loose, uncooked emulsion that never sets on the bread.
- "Cooked white meat"Most likely poached or roast chicken breast, though veal or rabbit would also answer the description. Two ounces is about 57 g.
- Mortar, then sieveA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but still push the paste through a fine sieve or tamis afterwards. Herb stalks and meat fibre will otherwise block the piping tip when you come to the cornet work.
- BéchamelOne tablespoon of cold, thick white sauce, used purely to loosen the paste. If you have none, an equal spoonful of thick cream gives a similar texture.
- Paper cornetA cone rolled from parchment with the tip snipped off, i.e. a small piping bag. A disposable bag with a fine plain tip is the nearest equivalent.
- Drain the tomato hardThis is the hinge. Seed the tomato, dice it small, salt it briefly and drain it before dressing with oil and vinegar, or the juice will soak the bread within minutes.
- The breadCut and stamp the brown bread. The recipe gives no drying step, but the shapes can be dried briefly in a low oven rather than toasted; crisp but not coloured is what holds the butter layer without going leathery.
- Assemble latePaste, ham cutouts and tomato can all be prepared hours ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator, but the pieces should be built no more than half an hour before serving.
- YieldA quarter-pound of tongue or ham and two ounces of chicken will comfortably dress twelve to sixteen 1½-inch squares — enough for six to eight as an hors d'oeuvre.
Small cold canapés like this one sat at both ends of the formal Edwardian dinner: as hors d'oeuvre variés at the start, or as the savoury served after the sweet, a course generally regarded as peculiar to British practice. The flavouring is a classic fines herbes pairing — tarragon and chervil, both anise-scented, both at their best raw and both commonly grown in kitchen gardens of the period, which is why the book asks for "a few spoonfuls of each" without a second thought. Ox-tongue, pressed and sold ready-cooked by the butcher, was one of the great standbys of the cold larder and cut cleanly into the "fancy slices" the recipe calls for. The whole construction is characteristic of the professional manner: nothing is cooked to order, everything is pounded, sieved, stamped and piped, and the labour goes entirely into appearance.