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FIRST-COURSE DISHES (Canap s Canap s are made)
Canapés Canapés are made from white, graham, and brown bread, sliced very thin and cut in various shapes. They may be dipped in melted butter, toasted or fried. The slices may be covered with any of the following mixtures. Served hot or cold.
Anchovy Canapés Cut bread in slices one quarter inch thick, cut in circles, dip in melted butter, sprinkle with salt and cayenne, spread with anchovy paste, and sprinkle with a few drops of lemon juice.
Caviare Canapés Cut bread in quarter-inch slices, cut slices four inches long and two inches wide. Fry in deep fat, or toast. Spread toast with caviare paste, sprinkle with a few drops of lemon juice and paprika. Garnish with finely chopped green or red pepper.
Cheese Canapés Cut bread in quarter-inch slices, spread lightly with French mustard, sprinkle with grated cheese and finely chopped olives. Or brown in oven before sprinkling with olives.
Crab Canapés Cut bread in slices one quarter inch thick, three inches long, and one inch and a half wide. Spread with butter and brown in oven. Mix one cup chopped crab meat, one tablespoon lemon juice, two drops tabasco, one half teaspoon salt, a few drops of onion juice, and two tablespoons olive oil. Mark the bread diagonally in four sections and spread them alternately with melted cheese and crab mixture. Separate sections with finely chopped pimento. Bacon Canapés Cut bread in triangles one fourth inch thick, sauté in bacon fat. Spread with French mustard, cover with cooked bacon finely chopped, and sprinkle with finely chopped pimolas.
Ham Canapés, Cut bread in slices one quarter inch thick, then in circles. Sauté in butter. Spread with finely chopped ham mixed to a paste with creamed butter and seasoned highly. Sprinkle with finely chopped, hard-cooked eggs.
Lobster Canapés Cut bread in one-fourth-inch slices; shape with doughnut cutter. Cream two tablespoons butter, add one cup finely chopped lobster meat, one teaspoon mustard, few drops Worcestershire sauce, few grains cayenne, and six olives finely chopped. Sauté bread in butter and spread with above mixture.
Salmon Canapés Shape bread, cut one fourth inch thick, with a cooky cutter. Spread with butter and brown in the oven.
Arrange around the outer edge of the circle finely chopped
A single master method with eight variations: thin bread, crisped in fat or the oven, spread with a savory paste. The hinge is the bread — quarter-inch slices that are toasted or fried until genuinely dry, so they do not go limp under a wet topping.
- Crisp the base properlyThe recipe gives no oven temperature or time; brown the bread until it is dry through rather than merely colored. Bases can be made hours ahead and held uncovered; topping them long before serving is what makes canapés go limp.
- French mustardIn American cookbooks of this period the term generally meant a smooth, vinegar-based prepared mustard of the Dijon type, not the bright yellow American kind; Dijon is a reasonable substitution.
- PimolasA brand-era term for green olives stuffed with pimiento, once common enough to be used generically. Ordinary pimiento-stuffed Spanish olives are the same thing.
- Onion juiceMade by halving an onion and pressing the cut face against a grater or reamer to express the liquid. Grated onion pulp works, or scrape a Microplane and use the juice that pools.
- Graham breadA coarse whole-wheat loaf, slightly sweet, in the tradition of Sylvester Graham. Any dense whole-wheat sandwich bread stands in; a fine crumb matters more than the flour, since open-textured artisan loaves tear when cut thin.
- Deep fatNo temperature is given. Bring the fat to 375F and fry the slices 30-45 seconds a side; the bread absorbs alarming amounts of oil below about 350F. Drain on paper before spreading.
- ShellfishThe crab and lobster mixtures are dressings for already-cooked meat and get no further cooking. Use picked cooked crab or lobster, keep the mixtures refrigerated, and dress them no more than a few hours ahead.
- "Melted cheese"For the crab canapés this means a thick cheese paste stiff enough to hold a piped or spread line, not a pourable sauce — grated cheese worked smooth with a little butter or cream, or a short flour-thickened sauce cooled to spreading consistency.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. How many shapes a loaf produces depends entirely on the cutter and how much is trimmed away, and each topping mixture stretches further or less far accordingly.
Canapés arrived in American cookbooks from French service, where the word means a couch or sofa — the bread being, by the traditional explanation, the seat on which the garnish reclines. They belong to the moment when the long, many-course dinner was giving way to shorter menus and the first course had to do more work, so the fussy little bread shapes cut with doughnut and cooky cutters carried the ornamental burden that had once fallen to elaborate soups and entrées. The tinned and bottled ingredients here are the giveaway of the period: anchovy paste, caviare paste, tabasco, Worcestershire, pimientos and stuffed olives were all cheap and shelf-stable, and a book aimed at the general housekeeper could assume its readers had them. That commercial pantry, not any French kitchen technique, is what made canapés a practical dish for a household without staff.