No. 853

Canapes Brownson

Canapes a la Brownson

Pare some slices of bread the same as for the Bartholomew (No. 852), then toast them, cover one side with a fine puree of potatoes (No. 725), and set on top thin slices of interlarded corned beef fried in butter, and over another layer of the potato puree, trim them neatly and dip them in beaten egg, roll them in bread crumbs, smooth the surfaces with the blade of a knife, and lay them on a baking sheet; sprinkle over some butter, dust the tops with grated parmesan cheese, and brown them in a hot oven; serve on folded napkins.

← No. 852 Canapes Bartholomew Hot Side Dishes No. 854 Canapes of Game →

For the Modern Kitchen

A layered fried-bread savoury from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, built like a small breaded sandwich and finished in the oven. Two of its components are cross-references, and the whole thing stands or falls on how stiff the potato is.

The hinge: a very stiff puréeThe hinge: a stiff purée -- The potato needs to be firm rather than a loose mash; Ranhofer sends you to No. 725 without describing it here. A wet purée will slump under the breadcrumb coat and squeeze out at the edges in the oven.
"A hot oven"The canapés are already cooked through; the oven is only there to set the crumbs, melt the butter and colour the parmesan. Ranhofer gives neither a temperature nor a time, so go by colour.
The bread base (No. 852)Slices pared of crust and trimmed neatly, then toasted; the dimensions come from the cross-referenced No. 852. Toasting first is not optional — untoasted bread absorbs butter and egg and collapses.
"Interlarded corned beef"Corned beef with fat running through it, i.e. cut from the brisket point or navel rather than the lean flat. Sliced thin and crisped in butter. Deli-counter corned beef works if you buy it from the fattier end; avoid the pressed, gelatine-bound tinned product.
Assembly orderPotato, beef, potato, then egg and crumbs over the whole stack including the sides. Smoothing the crumbed surface with a knife blade, as directed, gives the flat face that browns evenly — worth doing.
Chill before breadingNot in the original, but twenty minutes in the refrigerator once assembled firms the potato and makes the egg-and-crumb stage far less messy.
"Serve on folded napkins"A service convention of the period: a linen napkin folded on the platter absorbs butter and keeps the pieces from sliding. A rack or paper beneath the napkin does the same job now.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Reckon on one canapé per person as a hot side dish or savoury course, two if it is standing in as a light supper; a standard sandwich loaf gives about eight to ten trimmed bases.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is the record of that repertoire — nearly 3,500 numbered recipes, cross-referenced against each other in the way this one points back to No. 852 and No. 725. The canapés form a small family in the hot side dish chapter, each a toasted bread base under a different garnish and many of them named for a person; where a name is a person's, the honorees are generally taken to be patrons, colleagues or public figures of the Delmonico's circle, though Ranhofer almost never explains a name. Corned beef is the telling ingredient here: a plain American salt-cured cut, treated with the same layering, breading and parmesan gratin that the book applies to game and foie gras. That mix of chophouse economy and French technique is characteristic of Delmonico's in its late years, when the kitchen was cooking classical service for a city that also ate corned beef.