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Canapes Lorenzo
Cut six slices of bread the width of an American loaf and one-quarter of an inch in thickness, neatly pare off the crust and fry in a sautoire, together with half an ounce of fresh butter, so as to make them a light brown color; then boil eighteen hard-shell crabs in salted water for about twelve minutes, after which remove and allow them to become cool, when the upper shell should be removed, and with the aid of a pointed knife pick out all of the meat, cracking the claws and removing all the meat from there also; place it all on a plate, season with a teaspoonful of salt and half a saltspoonful of red pepper; then place one ounce of butter in a saucepan, with a peeled and very finely chopped onion, and cook them together for about two minutes over a moderate fire; add two tablespoonfuls of flour, stir again for two minutes, and add one gill of broth, and stir while slowly cooking for five minutes, now add the crab meat, and cook for quarter of an hour, stirring once in a while with a wooden spoon, then remove into another vessel and let it cool for fifteen minutes. Put in a sautoire a tablespoonful of good butter over a stove, and mix in with one tablespoonful of flour, and cook for three minutes gently; add a couple of ounces of grated Parmesan cheese and an equal quantity of Swiss cheese, stirring well together; place it in a vessel to cool. Put a layer of crab meat on each slice of toast a quarter of an inch thick, and divide the prepared cheese in six equal portions, forming them into ball shapes about two inches in diameter, and arrange them over the layer of crab meat in the center, place them on a dish and bake in a brisk oven for about five minutes, then take them out and serve them in the same dish in which they have been cooked.
A hot crab canapé built in three stages: fried bread, a thick crab mixture, and a cheese-laden roux shaped into balls and browned. Nothing here is difficult, but the quantities are written for a hotel kitchen and one cooking time is far too long.
- Cut the crab cooking shortFifteen minutes of simmering in the onion sauce turns picked crab stringy and washes out its sweetness. Two to three minutes is enough to bind the meat with the sauce, then spread it out to cool.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup, so the sauce takes 1/2 cup of broth. A saltspoonful is about 1/4 teaspoon, making the cayenne roughly an eighth of a teaspoon. A sautoire is a straight-sided shallow sauté pan.
- Brisk ovenRead that as 425-450F. The canapés are only in long enough to melt and colour the cheese balls, so the oven must be up to temperature before they go in; a broiler finish for the last 30 seconds does no harm.
- The crabsEighteen hard-shell crabs most likely means blue crabs, and eighteen of them yield roughly a pound of picked meat. A pound of good lump crab meat, picked over for shell, gives the same result without an hour at the table. If you do pick your own, discard the gills and the apron along with the top shell.
- The cheese mixtureThis is a roux with no liquid added, thickened further with about 2 oz each Parmesan and Gruyère or Emmental. It will look like a stiff paste and must chill until firm before you can roll it into two-inch balls; twenty minutes in the refrigerator is more reliable than cooling on the counter.
- BreadA quarter-inch slice of ordinary sandwich loaf, crusts off, fried in butter. Fry it a shade paler than you want, since it takes more colour in the oven, and drain it briefly so the base does not go greasy under the crab.
- YieldSix canapés, one per person as a first course. Bake and serve in the same ovenproof dish, as written; the cheese balls slump quickly once out of the heat.
The recipe belongs to the world of the large American luxury hotel and restaurant kitchen of the late nineteenth century: French method and French plate names applied to Chesapeake blue crabs, which were then cheap and plentiful in New York. The name Lorenzo is attached in this period to several crab-and-cheese preparations served on toast, though the person it honours is not documented and the attribution is traditional rather than established. What the recipe reveals most clearly is the labour available in such a kitchen — eighteen crabs boiled, cooled and hand-picked to garnish six slices of fried bread.