No. 852

Canapes Bartholomew

Canapes Barthelemy

Cut slices of bread five-sixteenths of an inch thick; pare them by shaping them into three and one-eighth of an inch lengths, and have them two inches and an eighth wide. Cut off from the four corners, quarter inch triangles, and dip the bread into melted butter, roll them in grated parmesan and set them on a dish that can be placed in the oven, lay on top thin slices of cooked ham, and cover the whole with melted Stilton cheese, season with red pepper, and put the dish into a hot oven for one minute; serve them either on the same dish or else on a napkin.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A canapé in Ranhofer's sense is a hot buttered crouton with a savoury topping, served as a small hot side dish rather than a cocktail nibble. The measurements are exact to the sixteenth of an inch, but the only ones that matter are the thickness of the bread and the brevity of the oven time.

The dimensions in plain termsFive-sixteenths of an inch is a generous quarter inch — a slice a little thinner than standard sandwich bread. The finished shape is about 3 x 2 inches with the corners clipped to make an octagon. A firm white pullman loaf, a day old, cuts cleanly; fresh soft bread tears when dipped in butter.
"A hot oven"Ranhofer gives no figure; in nineteenth-century usage a hot oven is generally reckoned at roughly 450-500F. Because the bread is already buttered and the cheese only needs to slacken, one minute is plausible at that heat; a broiler set high does much the same job. Watch it, as parmesan on butter goes from brown to bitter in seconds.
Red pepperNineteenth-century American books use "red pepper" for cayenne, not paprika and not chilli flakes. A pinch is enough — Stilton is already assertive.
Melted StiltonStilton does not melt to a smooth sauce; it softens, weeps fat and stays grainy. Ranhofer expects a thick coating, not a glaze. Warm it gently with a spoonful of cream or a knob of butter and mash it to a paste, then spread it over the ham; poured straight from a hot pan it will separate.
The ham"Cooked ham" here most likely means a boiled or baked ham sliced thin; a dry-cured cooked ham off the bone is closest. Modern water-added deli ham releases moisture under heat and can soften the crouton.
Order of assemblyButter, then parmesan, then into the dish, then ham, then Stilton. The parmesan crust is what keeps the bread from going sodden under the cheese, so do not skip it or substitute a soft grating cheese.
Yield and serviceOne standard loaf slice gives one canapé; count two per person as a savoury course. Serving "on a napkin" means a folded linen napkin on the platter to absorb butter — a warmed plate does the same.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire written out at length, which is why a trifle like this one carries a number, exact dimensions and a proper name. Canapés of this kind sat in the French service as hors-d'oeuvre chauds or as the savoury eaten near the end of a long meal, a slot the English-speaking world filled with cheese straws, anchovy toast and Welsh rarebit. The pairing of Stilton with ham on a parmesan crust points to that Anglo-American taste rather than a Parisian one: Stilton was an imported luxury on New York tables through the second half of the nineteenth century, often said to have been served whole with a spoon. The surnames attached to dishes in Ranhofer — Barthelemy, Brownson and dozens more — are generally taken to be patrons, colleagues or simply a convenient way to distinguish one variation from the next, and in most cases no record survives of who they were.