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Caviar Canapés
6 squares toast 6 teaspoons Russian caviar 1 teaspoon chopped parsley 1 teaspoon chopped onion 1 hard-boiled egg Cut the bread about one-quarter of an inch thick and two inches square (or round) and after it is toasted spread over each slice a teaspoon of ice-cold caviar. Mix the other ingredients; spread the mixture over the caviar and serve with quarters of lemon.
A six-piece canapé that depends almost entirely on temperature and timing: the toast must be crisp and the caviar must be cold, and the two should meet as late as possible.
- Assemble at the last minuteWarm toast under cold caviar means a soggy base and dulled, oily-tasting roe within a few minutes. Toast in advance, cool the squares completely on a rack, and spread only as the tray leaves the kitchen.
- What "Russian caviar" meantIn this period it meant sturgeon roe from the Caspian — beluga, osetra or sevruga — sold salted in tins. Wild Caspian sturgeon is now protected under CITES and legal caviar is farmed; farmed osetra or a good hackleback or paddlefish roe fills the same role at a fraction of the cost.
- Handle the roe gentlyUse a bone, horn or plastic spoon and spread rather than smear. Metal is traditionally avoided as it is said to give the roe a tinny note, and hard spreading bursts the eggs and turns the topping to paste.
- Bread and cuttingA quarter inch is thinner than a standard sandwich slice — cut from an unsliced firm white loaf. Two-inch squares from a sandwich loaf give you about four pieces per slice; trim crusts before toasting so the edges brown evenly.
- Sieve the eggThe recipe says only "1 hard-boiled egg." Push it through a coarse sieve rather than chopping, so the yolk and white fall as fine crumbs that sit on the caviar instead of sliding off in wet lumps.
- Tame the onionA teaspoon of raw onion, minced very fine, is enough to overwhelm delicate roe. Rinse the minced onion in cold water and blot it dry, or substitute the white part of a scallion.
- A thin buttered barrierNot in the original, but a common modern addition: a scraping of softened unsalted butter on the cooled toast slows moisture from reaching the crumb. Do not salt anything — the caviar carries all the salt the dish needs.
- YieldSix canapés, so one or two per person as part of a larger spread. Six teaspoons of caviar is roughly an ounce; scale by the ounce rather than the tin.
Caviar canapés belong to the era when Russian sturgeon roe travelled in iced tins to American hotel kitchens and became shorthand for expensive hospitality. The word canapé is French for a couch or sofa, borrowed for a piece of bread that a garnish sits on, and the toast-plus-roe-plus-egg formula was familiar enough in early twentieth-century service that cookbooks record it in a few lines, as here, assuming the cook already knew the shape of the thing. The lemon quarters are the period's standard corrective for anything rich and salty, and the chopped onion and egg echo the Russian habit of serving caviar with blini and dishes of the same garnishes.