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Canapes of Ham
Place in a mortar three ounces cooked, lean ham and sharply pound it for ten minutes, that is, to a smooth pulp. Then add half ounce good butter, two tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, half saltspoon cayenne pepper and half teaspoon French mustard. Pound the whole well together for five minutes more, then place the paste on a plate. Prepare six small, round toasts, two inches in diameter and quarter of an inch thick. Divide the ham preparation evenly on the six toasts, and with a knife give the paste a nice dome shape. Dress on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A potted-ham spread on rounds of toast, from the era when a mortar did the work of a food processor. Nothing here is difficult; the only real decisions are texture and the very assertive seasoning.
- The mortar, or the machineFifteen minutes of pounding produces a genuinely smooth, slightly emulsified paste. A small food processor gets there in under a minute, but pulse rather than run it, and stop while the ham still has some body — over-processing turns it pasty and dull.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so half a saltspoon is an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne. For three ounces of ham that is already a warm heat; add it in stages and taste.
- Two tablespoons of WorcestershireThat is a great deal of liquid for three ounces of meat and half an ounce of butter, and the paste may slacken past the point where it will hold a dome. Start with one tablespoon, work it in, and add more only if the mixture stays firm.
- French mustardIn period usage this means a smooth prepared mustard in the French style, of the Dijon or milder Bordeaux type, not the bright yellow American kind. Dijon is the usual modern substitute.
- Choice of hamCooked, lean ham means a boiled or baked ham off the bone. Wet-cured supermarket deli ham is saltier and wetter than what the recipe assumes, so hold back on the Worcestershire and do not add salt until you have tasted.
- The toastsCut two-inch rounds from a firm white sandwich loaf a quarter inch thick, then toast or dry them in a 350F oven until crisp through. Soft or thick toast will collapse under the paste and go soggy within minutes.
- Yield and timingSix canapes — one small plate, enough for two or three people with drinks. The paste can be made a day ahead and refrigerated, but spread it on the toasts no more than half an hour before serving.
- The folded napkinA formal service convention of the period: canapes and other small dry items were dressed on a folded linen napkin on the serving dish. Purely presentational, and safely ignored.
Canapes of this kind belong to the codified hors d'oeuvre repertoire that spread from French professional kitchens into English and American household books around the turn of the twentieth century — small savoury mouthfuls served before a meal or with wine, distinguished from the older English savoury course served at the end. The technique is essentially potted meat, a much older British preservation method in which cooked meat was pounded with butter and spices and sealed under a layer of fat; here the keeping function has dropped away and only the pounding and the seasoning remain. The Worcestershire sauce and cayenne mark it as an Anglo-American adaptation rather than a strictly French one, and the instruction to shape each portion into a dome with a knife reflects a period in which the visual regularity of the plate mattered as much as the flavour.