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Canapes, Souvaroff
Cut from a loaf of sandwich bread six round pieces quarter-inch thick and two and a half inches in diameter; toast to a nice golden colour, lightly butter, then spread a teaspoon Russian caviare over each toast. Finely chop up the whites of two hard-boiled eggs, evenly sprinkle them over the six round pieces, then arrange one anchovy in oil, ringshape, on the centre of each, fill the inside of the anchovy ring with a little freshly chopped parsley, dress on a side dish, decorate with a little parsley greens, six quarters lemon and serve.
A cold assembly rather than a cooked dish, so the whole result depends on the order of operations and on restraint with salt.
- The hinge: assemble lateToast, butter and caviare in that sequence, as the recipe directs. The butter acts as a moisture barrier; caviare and chopped egg white sitting on bare toast will soften the base fairly quickly.
- YieldSix canapes, i.e. one or two people as a first course. For a party, multiply and cut the rounds from a close, fine-crumbed tin loaf, which is the sort of thing "sandwich bread" points to here – a crumb that holds a 2 1/2-inch cutter cleanly.
- ToastingCut the rounds first, then toast; toasting the slice whole and cutting after leaves you crushing the crumb. A dry pan or a 400F oven for a few minutes gives more even colour than a toaster for discs this thin.
- "Russian caviare"At the period this meant salted sturgeon roe from the Caspian, sold under names such as beluga, osetra and sevruga; expensive but obtainable. Today wild Caspian sturgeon roe is restricted; farmed sturgeon caviare, or salmon, trout or lumpfish roe, all work at a teaspoon per round.
- Anchovies"Anchovy in oil" means a whole filleted anchovy, limp enough to curl into a ring. Tinned fillets vary a good deal in size and saltiness; blot the oil off and taste one before committing, and add no salt anywhere in the dish.
- Egg whitesTwo hard-boiled whites is generous for six rounds. Chop them fine and blot them dry so any moisture they carry does not run into the caviare.
- LemonSix quarters means quarters of one or two lemons cut lengthwise, set round the dish as a garnish and squeezed by the eater. Trim the pith and pick out the seeds if you want them to look as intended.
Canapes named "Souvaroff" (also spelled Souvarov or Suvarov) belong to the long nineteenth-century habit of attaching a Russian general's name to a dish, the classical garnish being associated with truffles and foie gras: the reference is generally traced to Alexander Suvorov, the Russian field marshal of the 1790s, and by the time cooks were using it the name signalled a style rather than any connection to the man. The whole family of caviare-and-anchovy toasts reflects the Franco-Russian fashion that dominated grand hotel and restaurant cooking, when service a la russe had reshaped the meal and a small salt-and-butter mouthful before soup was expected of any ambitious table.