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Herring Canapes
Toast slices of white bread, remove the crusts and cut oblong. Spread them with butter mixed with a very little French mustard, cover with finely minced sour pickle; place upon each two boneless herrings. Sprinkle finely chopped hard-cooked egg yolk over top.
A cold canapé that depends entirely on the quality of the herring and on the toast staying crisp. Assemble it within minutes of serving.
- "Boneless herrings"Most likely cured fillets of the kind sold in jars or tins: schmaltz herring, marinated herring, or the old bottled "boneless herring" in brine. The recipe's "two" suggests small fillets; if yours are large, cut them into strips the length of the toast. Rinse and pat dry brine-packed fish, or the toast will go soggy at once.
- French mustardDijon, not the sweetened yellow condiment. "A very little" is right — roughly 1/2 teaspoon creamed into 4 tablespoons of soft butter is enough for a dozen canapés.
- Sour pickleA dill or brine-cured cucumber, not sweet gherkins or bread-and-butter chips. Mince it fine and press it in a cloth or sieve; wet pickle is the main cause of collapse in a canapé like this.
- Cutting the toastToast first, then trim the crusts and cut — the reverse order wastes bread and gives ragged edges. Oblongs of about 1 by 2 1/2 inches suit a standard sandwich loaf, four to a slice.
- The egg yolkHard-cook the eggs and cool them before separating. The recipe says finely chopped; pushing the yolks through a fine sieve is an easy way to get an even, fine crumb. Reserve the whites for another canape or for garnish.
- Butter temperatureThe butter should be soft enough to spread without tearing the toast but not melted, or it soaks in instead of forming the moisture barrier that keeps the toast crisp.
- Yield and timingOne loaf slice gives four canapés; figure three or four per person as a first course with drinks. Spread and top no more than 20 minutes before serving, and keep them cool but not refrigerated uncovered.
Canapés — the word is generally traced to the French for a sofa or couch, the bread being the seat on which the garnish reclines — moved from the restaurant into the American household kitchen around the turn of the twentieth century. Cured herring was an obvious filling: cheap, shelf-stable, and supplied by Northern European and Scandinavian packers, whose trade in salted and marinated herring was centuries old. The combination here — oily fish, mustard butter, sour pickle, sieved egg yolk — is essentially the logic of a Northern European smorgasbord plate reduced to something that can be held in one hand, and the same set of flavors still turns up on rye in Germany, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries.