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Canapes Madison
Cut six thin slices of bread and trim them all alike, toast to a golden color, and place them on a dish. Cover each slice with a very thin slice of lean cooked ham; spread a little mustard over it, then cover with a layer of provincial garnishing. Dredge grated Parmesan cheese on the top, and strew a little fresh breadcrumbs over all. Place them in a hot oven, and bake for ten minutes; then take them out, arrange on a hot dish, covered by a folded napkin, and serve.
A straightforward hot canapé, but two of its instructions assume a kitchen full of prepared components. Read the notes on "provincial garnishing" and oven heat before you start.
- "Provincial garnishing"Almost certainly an anglicising of garniture provencale, which in period usage generally means tomato cooked down with garlic and olive oil, often with parsley and sometimes mushroom. Whatever the exact formula, it needs to be thick and nearly dry, or it will soak the toast: make a stiff tomato-garlic compote and reduce it until a spoon leaves a clean track.
- "A hot oven"Around 425-450F. Ten minutes at that heat is enough to melt the Parmesan and colour the crumbs on already-cooked ingredients; nothing here needs actual cooking.
- The breadThin slices, trimmed to match one another as the recipe directs; a close-crumbed white loaf suits the job best. The bread is toasted before assembly rather than after: untoasted bread turns to paste under the tomato.
- HamLean cooked ham sliced very thin, as the recipe specifies; trimming it to the size of the toast keeps the layers even. Thick or fatty ham curls in the oven and lifts the topping off.
- MustardA period Dijon or an English mustard, used sparingly. "A little" means a scrape, since the Parmesan is already salty.
- Crumbs and cheeseFresh breadcrumbs, not dried, dredged over the grated Parmesan so they brown in the cheese fat. If the top is pale after ten minutes, a minute under the broiler finishes it.
- Yield and servingSix canapes, so one or two per person as a first course or with drinks. The folded napkin on the hot dish is a service convention of the period; whatever its original rationale, it does absorb moisture and helps keep the toast from going limp.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893 and published The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896, a vast compendium aimed at both hotel kitchens and ambitious households. Its canape chapter reflects the moment when the hot savoury toast, long a staple of the English dinner's closing course, was being reworked in New York as an opening one. Names like "Madison" were freely attached to hotel dishes after streets, guests and private dining rooms, and generally carry no fixed meaning beyond marking one variation from the next; the same book names canapes for other people and places. What makes the recipe legible today is its reliance on standing preparations that a professional kitchen would already have at hand, so a dish that looks incomplete on the page was short work on the line.