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Lobster Canapes
Chop the meat of a boiled lobster fine, season with pepper and salt, a dash of lemon juice, and a little mayonnaise dressing and spread on rounds of toasted bread. Garnish with a sprig of parsley.
A four-line canapé that depends almost entirely on the quality of the lobster and the restraint of the dressing. The book assumes you have a cooked lobster on hand and a competent mayonnaise.
- The hinge: bind, do not dressAdd the mayonnaise a teaspoon at a time until the chopped meat just holds together. Too much and the mixture slumps off the toast and soaks it within minutes.
- How much lobsterThe tail and claw meat of one 1 1/4 lb lobster yields roughly 1 cup chopped, enough for about 20 to 24 rounds cut with a 1 1/2-inch cutter.
- Chop, not mince'Fine' need not mean paste. Knife-cut pieces rather than a pounded mixture keep the texture that distinguishes lobster from any other salad on toast.
- Toasted bread roundsThe book says only 'rounds of toasted bread'; cut the rounds from firm white sandwich bread with a cutter and toast or dry them until crisp through. Soft toast turns limp under the moist filling.
- Mayonnaise dressingIn books of this period the term generally meant a hand-beaten oil-and-egg-yolk emulsion made at home, though 'mayonnaise dressing' also covered cooked dressings. If using commercial mayonnaise, sharpen it with extra lemon juice.
- SeasoningLobster boiled in salted or sea water may already carry salt, so season the mixture, taste it on a scrap of toast, then adjust. Cayenne is a common seasoning for lobster in cookery of this kind if you want more edge.
- Timing for a partyMix the filling up to a day ahead and keep it cold. Top the rounds no more than 20 minutes before serving.
Canapés appear in American entertaining books around the turn of the twentieth century as the small savoury opening to a meal; the word is French for a sofa or couch, and the usual explanation offered is that the bread is the seat on which the topping sits. Lobster was an obvious luxury topping: boiled lobster dressed with mayonnaise was a familiar hotel and restaurant dish, so a sandwich book of the day could simply shrink the salad onto a toast round. The parsley sprig follows the era's habit of finishing cold dishes with a green garnish.