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Suggestions for Canapés
1. Spread rounds of bread, toasted and buttered, with purée of pâté 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 purée 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 lemonjuice 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 sautéd 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 numbered variations rather than one dish, all built on the same principle: a firm toasted base, a fatty savory spread, and a sharp garnish. The instructions assume a cook who knows what a canapé should look like, so the gaps worth filling are equipment, oven heat and the modern availability of the toppings.
- Oven heat for toastingThe original says only "toast in the oven" and gives no temperature. A moderately hot oven, around 375-400F, suits both the drying of the bread and the brief reheating in numbers 5 and 6; watch it rather than trusting a clock, as the cheese needs only to slump.
- The base must be dry, not merely toastedThe base wants to be dry, not merely toasted -- Day-old firm white bread, cut into small rounds and dried through rather than just browned on the surface, holds a wet spread and a garnish better; soft fresh sandwich bread tends to go limp soon after plating.
- Pâté de foie grasPâté de foie gras -- At the time this would have meant a tinned goose-liver paste, softened and pressed through a sieve to make the "purée." Foie gras is now expensive and its sale is restricted in some jurisdictions; a good chicken-liver pâté or mousse behaves much the same on toast.
- Sardine and anchovy pasteBoth were sold ready-made in small tins and both are still available. Spread thinly and taste before adding any further seasoning, and go easy on or skip salt in the cheese-and-butter mixture.
- "Cheese creamed with butter"Grate a dry cheese fine and beat it with roughly half its weight in softened butter until smooth. Aged Cheddar or Gruyère works; pre-shredded cheese with anti-caking starch will stay grainy.
- "Sautéd in fat""Sautéd in fat" -- Period shorthand that leaves the choice of fat open. Butter is right here, and the mushroom caps should be cooked until they have given up their liquid or they will weep onto the toast.
- Caviar as garnishThe recipe means a spoonful of roe used decoratively, not a service of fine caviar. Add it after any heating, off the heat and at the last moment; warmth ruins both texture and flavor.
- Yield and serviceAll six versions are assembly work that must be done close to serving; the hot ones in numbers 2, 5 and 6 go from oven to table directly, and the original's instruction to fold the rolls into napkins and "serve at once" points the same way.
Canapé is the French word for a sofa or couch, and the culinary sense is usually explained as an analogy, the topping sitting on its slice of bread. The form reached American tables through the French restaurant tradition, and the prominence of caviar, anchovy and tinned fish on such lists is often linked to the Russian zakuski table. What dates this page is not the technique but the pantry it assumes: tinned foie gras, sardine paste and anchovy paste were ordinary grocery items in the early twentieth century, cheap enough for a middle-class hostess and useful precisely because they kept. The crisply numbered variations offer a repertoire of small formal touches to a cook who had no French chef and no time to spare.