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Suggestions for Canapes
1. Spread rounds of bread, toasted and buttered, with puree of pate de foie gras. On top of this place a slice of hard-boiled egg. Garnish with caviar and filet of anchovy. 2. Another way is to scoop the inside from small rolls, butter and toast them in the oven. Spread with puree of foie gras and return to the oven. When piping hot, fold in napkins and serve at once as first course. 3. Spread oblong pieces of bread buttered and toasted with sardine paste. Place a sardine on each and sprinkle with lemon-juice and chopped parsley. Or toast in the oven and serve hot with lemon. 4. Spread rounds of buttered bread with a paste made from finely chopped, hard-cooked egg. Decorate with a row of slices of gherkin. Or season caviar with lemon-juice and a dash of onion and garnish with a slice of olive. 5. Spread rounds of buttered toast with anchovy paste and then with a mixture of grated cheese and butter beaten to a cream. Reheat in the oven until the cheese melts. Garnish with a mushroom cap sauted in fat or with a bit of watercress. 6. Spread rounds of buttered toast with anchovy paste and then with a mixture of shredded crab-meat mixed with cheese creamed with butter.
Six variations on the same structure: a small piece of toast, a savory paste, a garnish. The instructions assume you know how to cut and toast bread, so what follows fills in the numbers and the shopping.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature. Where canapes are toasted or reheated in the oven (points 2, 3, 5 and 6), a moderate oven of about 375F will warm them through and melt the cheese in three to five minutes without drying the bread to a cracker.
- Bread and shapeDay-old firm white bread cuts cleanly; a 1 1/2-inch round cutter or a knife for the oblongs. Toast the rounds on both sides before buttering so they stay crisp under a wet topping.
- Pate de foie grasThe book means tinned goose-liver pate, an imported luxury carried by grocers at the time. Production and sale are now restricted in a number of jurisdictions; a duck-liver mousse or a well-seasoned chicken-liver pate stands in for it in both uses here.
- Puree of foie grasPush the pate through a fine sieve and beat in a little soft butter until it is smooth enough to spread without tearing the toast. Cold pate straight from the tin will crumble.
- Anchovy and sardine pasteBoth were sold in tubes and small jars and both are still available; they are heavily salted, so spread thinly and add no salt to the cheese-and-butter mixture that goes over them.
- Sauted in fatPeriod shorthand for whatever fat the kitchen had -- butter, drippings or a mild oil. Butter is right for a mushroom cap garnish; cook it until the moisture has cooked off, or it will weep onto the canape.
- CaviarKeep it cold and add it at the last moment. Never warm it, and dress it with lemon and grated onion only just before serving, since acid dulls the eggs on standing.
- Timing and yieldNone of these hold. Assemble cold canapes no more than half an hour ahead and send hot ones out immediately. Reckon three or four pieces per person as a first course; a standard sandwich loaf yields roughly two dozen small rounds.