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Olive and Caper Canapes
Cut six slices of bread out of which cut twelve rounds. Melt some butter in a stewpan, then put in the slices of bread and fry them. When they are nicely browned take them out of the fat and place them on a piece of paper to drain. Skin and bone twelve anchovies, put them in a mortar, mash, then rub them through a fine wire sieve. Spread the anchovy paste over the pieces of bread, strew finely chopped capers and olives on the top, place them on a baking-dish and put in a brisk oven for ten minutes. Arrange the toast on a fancy napkin and serve it while it is very hot.
A hot anchovy canapé of the sort that opened a formal dinner at the Waldorf. Nothing in it is difficult, but the fried bread and the salt need attention.
- Brisk ovenA brisk oven is a hot one, generally rendered as somewhere around 400-450F. These go in only to heat through and marry the toppings; the bread is already cooked.
- Ten minutes is too longFried bread rounds that have already browned in butter will darken and turn bitter in ten minutes at that heat. Three to five minutes is enough to bring them up very hot.
- AnchoviesTwelve anchovies here means whole salt-packed fish, which is why the recipe says to skin and bone them. Twelve whole fish give about twenty-four fillets, so reckon on roughly two 2 oz tins of oil-packed fillets, drained; rinse salt-packed ones and pat dry.
- Mortar and sieveThe sieving exists to remove fibre and stray bone from salted fish. With tinned fillets a fork and a small bowl will do, or a few pulses in a mini processor with a teaspoon of the packing oil to loosen the paste.
- Frying the breadButter alone at frying heat browns fast and can scorch. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, holds up better; work in batches and do not crowd the pan.
- SaltAnchovies, capers and olives are all cured. Add no salt at any stage; a grind of pepper and a squeeze of lemon after baking is the only seasoning worth adding.
- Capers and olivesDrain and blot both before chopping, or the wet mince will slide off the paste in the oven. Firm green olives hold their shape better than brined black.
- YieldTwelve rounds, enough for four to six as a first bite with drinks. They must be served immediately; the bread softens as it cools.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maitre d'hotel, published his cook book in the 1890s, when the canape is often said to have been still a fairly new arrival in American dining rooms. The word is the French for a sofa or couch, applied to a small piece of fried or toasted bread that a savoury garnish sits upon, and anchovy was one such cushion filling: cheap, intensely salty, and useful for sharpening the appetite before a long procession of courses. Hot anchovy toasts of this kind also blur into the English savoury course served at the end of dinner, and recipes of the 1880s and 1890s appear to move them from one end of the meal to the other. The insistence on serving them on a fancy napkin, very hot, suggests a book that is as much a record of how a great hotel presented food as of how it cooked it.