Home › The World's Kitchen › Canape of Smoked Salmon
Canape of Smoked Salmon
Cut out from a stale sandwich loaf of bread six slices quarter of an inch thick, then cut each into two-inch square pieces. Toast them to a nice golden colour and lightly butter; cover them with very thin slices of smoked salmon, nicely trim, dress on a side dish with a folded napkin, decorate with a little parsley greens, six quarters lemon and a hard-boiled egg, finely chopped; sprinkle this over them and serve.
A cold canapé that depends entirely on the quality of two things: the toast and the salmon. The method is sound as written; most of what follows is translation.
- The breadA "sandwich loaf" is a fine-crumbed white pan loaf, and stale means a day or two old so it slices cleanly at a quarter inch without tearing. Six slices cut into two-inch squares gives anywhere from about two to four pieces per slice depending on the size of the loaf and how much crust you trim.
- Toast, then butter, then coolButter the toast while warm so it absorbs, but let the squares cool completely before laying on the salmon. Warm toast under cold fish softens the surface and makes the whole thing limp within minutes.
- Which smoked salmonThe book means cold-smoked salmon, sliced translucently thin — what a deli sells as lox or Nova. Hot-smoked salmon, which flakes rather than slices, will not lie flat and gives a different dish entirely.
- "Nicely trim"Trim the salmon to the square rather than draping it over the edges. Overhanging fish curls and dries, and the point of the exercise is a clean geometric shape on the platter.
- The folded napkinA period presentation: a linen napkin folded on the serving dish, canapés arranged on top. A doily or plain plate works the same way; nothing is lost if you skip it.
- The egg garnishSieve or chop the hard-boiled egg fine and scatter it at the last moment. Chopped egg weeps and dulls if it sits, so hold it separately if you are assembling ahead.
- ServingEnough for six as a first course or a passed appetizer, going by the six lemon quarters. Assemble within an hour of serving and keep them cold until they go out.
The canapé — the name is the French word for a sofa or couch, the culinary sense traditionally explained as the bread being the seat on which the garnish reclines — was a fixture of restaurant service by the period of this book, and smoked salmon was among the most reliable of its dressings because it required no cooking and kept well behind a hotel counter. The presentation here is pure dining-room French of the period: the folded napkin, the parsley, the quartered lemons, the sieved egg scattered over the top, all of it aimed at making a plate of fish on toast look composed. Cold-smoking salmon was an old northern European and Scottish preservation trade long before it became a luxury garnish.