Home › The Science of the Table › FIRST-COURSE DISHES (Truffles Next finely chopped)
FIRST-COURSE DISHES (Truffles Next finely chopped)
truffles. Next finely chopped white of egg. Next yolk of egg which has been pressed through a sieve. Then finely flaked salmon. Garnish salmon with a small sprig of parsley.
Just before serving pour over a few drops of olive oil or place a teaspoonful of mayonnaise on the salmon.
Sardine Canapés Cut brown bread in circles, spread with butter, and heat in the oven. Pound sardines to a paste, add an equal amount of finely chopped, hard-cooked eggs, season with lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Spread on brown bread. Garnish each canapé in the center with a circle of hard-cooked white of egg capped with a teaspoonful hardcooked yolk. Tomato and Cucumber Canapés Fry circles of bread in deep fat. Fry slices of tomato in deep fat. Place one slice of tomato on each circle of bread. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Garnish each slice with one slice of cucumber and hard-cooked white of egg cut in shape of petal, to represent a daisy.
Nut and Olive Canapés Cut bread in crescents. Fry in deep fat. Mix equal quantities of chopped nuts and olives, with enough mayonnaise dressing to spread. Spread on fried bread, and garnish with small diamonds of pimentoes.
Tongue Canapés Toast triangles of graham bread, spread with butter. Cut slices of cooked tongue in small pieces, mix with creamed butter to a paste, add two tablespoons capers to each half cup of tongue. Spread on bread. Sprinkle with salt and cayenne, and garnish with chopped water cress. 1 pint small clams
A run of five canapé formulas from a first-course chapter, printed here mid-stream: the page opens partway through a salmon canapé and ends with an orphaned line, "1 pint small clams," that belongs to whatever recipe followed. Everything between is complete enough to work from, though the book assumes you already know its proportions and its garnishing habits.
- The fragment at the topThe first lines are the tail of a layered salmon canapé — bread, then truffle, chopped egg white, sieved yolk, flaked salmon. Assume a buttered round of bread underneath; the base is on the previous page.
- Deep-fat fryingTwo of these call for frying bread in deep fat with no temperature given. Around 375F suits this kind of frying, though the book itself offers no guidance: the crouton browns quickly and does not soak. Fry the bread first, then the tomato slices, and drain both well or the topping slides.
- Fried tomato slicesCut them thick, around half an inch, and blot them dry before they go into the fat, or the water in the fruit will make the oil spit and the slice collapse. Firm, underripe tomatoes hold their shape best.
- Graham breadA coarse whole-wheat bread made from unsifted flour, standard in American kitchens of this period and still sold in some places as graham or whole-wheat sandwich bread. Any dense whole-wheat loaf substitutes without loss.
- Creamed butterButter beaten alone until pale and soft, not butter with cream added. It must be genuinely at room temperature or the pounded tongue will not bind into a spreadable paste.
- SardinesTinned sardines in oil, drained and mashed skin, bone and all; the soft bones break down when pounded. A standard small tin, once the equal quantity of egg is folded in, will cover several rounds.
- PimentoesJarred roasted red peppers, canned or bottled, sold under that name then and now. Pat them dry before cutting the diamonds or they will bleed pink into the mayonnaise.
- Yield and timingNone of these gives a count; figure two to three canapés per person as a first course. All are assembled at the last minute — bread crisped or fried in advance, spreads made an hour or two ahead and chilled, but nothing put together until just before serving or the base goes soft.
Canapés of this kind belong to the elaborate turn-of-the-century first course, when a formal American dinner might open with something small, salty and highly decorated before the soup. The garnishing here — sieved yolk, egg white cut into petals to make a daisy, diamonds of pimento — reflects a period taste for cold dishes arranged as carefully as they were cooked, a habit associated with French service and with the domestic-science schools that shaped books like this one. Lowney's was a chocolate company, and its cook book was published in part to put its products into American kitchens, but the volume ranges across the whole dinner and its savory chapters read like the cooking-school manuals of the 1900s. The tongue and the tinned sardines are worth noting: both were ordinary pantry items then, tongue available cooked from the butcher and sardines a widely sold canned good.