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Cheese Canapes
With a biscuit cutter cut small circles from rather thin slices of rye bread, and brown them lightly in a little bacon fat. Put a few shreds of pimento on each circle, cover with grated cheese, and set in oven just long enough to melt the cheese. Serve hot as a first course.
Cheese Sandwiches (of Hot Biscuits) Have ready some very thin slices of cheese. Bake a pan of biscuits (see Surprise Biscuits, page 12), and immediately on taking them from the oven break them open quickly, spread lightly with butter, and lay a slice of cheese between each. Cover with a warm napkin and serve promptly. It is necessary to work quickly so the warmth of the biscuit will melt the cheese. These are good for an emergency luncheon.
Two quick uses for stale bread and biscuits, both dependent on residual heat rather than long cooking. Neither gives temperatures or quantities, so a little judgement is needed.
- Oven heat for the canapésThe recipe gives no temperature; the cheese only has to melt, so a few minutes in a hot oven — somewhere around 425F — should be enough, or run them under the broiler while watching closely. Rye rounds already browned in fat will scorch fast.
- Slice thickness"Rather thin" is not defined; something in the region of a quarter inch works. Day-old rye cuts cleanly with a biscuit cutter; fresh bread tears and compresses under the blade.
- PimentoJarred pimentos are the same product the author meant: mild red peppers, roasted and peeled, packed in brine. Drain and blot them or the moisture will steam the cheese and soften the toast.
- Which cheeseA firm grating cheese that melts smoothly — aged cheddar, Gruyère, Emmental — suits both dishes. Pre-shredded supermarket cheese is coated with starch and melts sluggishly; grate your own.
- Bacon fatThe recipe specifies bacon fat, which seasons the base as it browns. Butter or olive oil works but gives a plainer result.
- The hinge in the sandwichesThere is no cooking step at all — the biscuit's own heat melts the cheese. Slice the cheese paper-thin in advance, split the biscuits the moment they leave the oven, and cover them at once. Cold or thick cheese simply will not melt.
- YieldA standard 2-inch cutter will give perhaps two or three rounds from a slice of a large rye loaf; the recipe gives no yield, so judge the number per person by the rest of the meal.
This is a genre of cookery book that treats yesterday's bread as an asset rather than waste, and the canapé term arrived in the plain American kitchen. Canapé means sofa or couch in French, and the garnish is conventionally said to sit on the bread as on a seat; by the early twentieth century the word was firmly attached to small hot or cold savouries served before a meal. Pimento was a fashionable convenience item: cheap, tinned or jarred, brightly coloured, and turned up in cheese spreads, salads and stuffed olives all through the era. The second half of the entry, cheese slipped into a just-baked biscuit, belongs to the older Southern and Midwestern habit of building a whole hurried course around hot bread, ending with the instruction to cover it with a warm napkin.