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Canapes of Caviare
Cut out from sandwich bread six pieces one-third of an inch thick and one and a half inches square. Toast them to a good golden colour. Neatly trim the crust, then evenly spread over one teaspoon Russian caviare on each toast. Hash very finely one cold hard-boiled egg. Mix it thoroughly with one teaspoon very finely chopped parsley, one teaspoon finely chopped sound onion. Spread this over each toast, evenly divided. Dress on a dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six quarters of lemon and parsley and serve.
A straightforward cold hors d'oeuvre that needs almost no translation, though the caviar itself is the part that has changed most since the book was written.
- Caviar today"Russian caviare" in this period meant sturgeon roe: beluga, osetra or sevruga. It was a luxury item, though cheaper in real terms than it is now. Wild Caspian sturgeon is CITES-restricted; buy farmed sturgeon caviar, or use salmon, trout or paddlefish roe, which sit well against the egg and onion.
- A teaspoon is a lotSix teaspoons is roughly an ounce of roe, which at modern prices is a real outlay. A scant half teaspoon per toast still reads generously and lets a 30 g tin cover the plate.
- Handle the roe cold and gentlyUse a bone, horn or plastic spoon rather than metal, keep the tin on ice until the toasts are made, and spread with a light hand so the eggs are not crushed. This is the step that decides whether the dish tastes clean or muddy.
- The bread"Sandwich bread" means a fine, close-crumbed white loaf, not a rustic one. Cut a third of an inch thick, toast dry, then trim the crusts after toasting as directed, since the edges shrink and firm up in the heat.
- Sound onion"Sound" simply means fresh and unblemished. Chop it very fine and, if it is strong, rinse it in cold water and blot dry; a raw onion bite will bury the roe.
- Assemble at the last minuteToast draws moisture from the egg and roe and softens quickly. Toast ahead if you like, but top the pieces just before they go to the table.
- YieldSix canapes, enough for two or three people as a first bite with a chilled dry white or a cold vodka. Scale by the piece.
- The folded napkinThe napkin on the dish was a standard period presentation device. A doily or a small chilled plate does the same work.
Canapes as a named course belong to the age of the long formal dinner, when a plate of small savoury toasts came round early in the meal or with drinks; the word is simply French for a sofa or couch, the toast being the seat on which the topping sits. Caviar reached western European and American tables in quantity in the late nineteenth century, when Caspian sturgeon fisheries were being worked hard and Russian houses shipped packed tins westward; it was expensive but not yet the near-mythical luxury it became after the stocks collapsed and international trade controls came in. The pairing with sieved hard-boiled egg, parsley, onion and lemon is the standard garnish of that era, and survives as the ring of little bowls set around a modern caviar service. Its appearance in a book called The International Cook Book is characteristic: American cookery writing of the 1900s and 1910s is often said to have leaned on French service and Russian ingredients as a mark of fashionable hotel dining, though how far that held is harder to document.