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Salmon Canapes
Toast rounds of white bread and spread with melted butter; next with finely flaked salmon, to which add a dash of Worcestershire sauce, and a drop of olive oil; sprinkle finely chopped hard-boiled egg over top. Garnish with a small sprig of parsley.
A five-minute canapé that depends entirely on the quality of the fish and the crispness of the toast. Everything here is assembled cold onto a warm base, so have the components ready before the bread goes under the heat.
- The salmonThis most likely meant canned salmon, which was cheap, ubiquitous and already cooked. Good tinned or jarred salmon still works; leftover poached or hot-smoked salmon flaked fine is better. Pick out skin and the soft round vertebrae if using tinned fish packed with bones.
- Rounds of breadCut with a 1½ to 2 inch plain cutter from a firm white sandwich loaf, slightly stale so it holds its shape. One standard slice gives two rounds; a large loaf yields roughly 24 canapés, enough for eight to ten people as a first bite.
- ToastingThe recipe says only 'toast' and specifies no method, temperature or time. Drying the rounds through in a hot oven, turning once, works better than colouring the surface only; toast that is merely browned goes limp within minutes under the moist salmon.
- "Spread with melted butter"Brush the butter onto the toast while both are still hot so it soaks in and seals the crumb against the fish. This is the step that decides whether the canapé is crisp or soggy at the table.
- Seasoning quantities'A dash' and 'a drop' could be read as per canape or as added to the flaked fish as a whole; the phrasing is ambiguous. Either way it is easier to mix the flaked salmon with the Worcestershire and oil in a bowl first: about ½ teaspoon Worcestershire and 1 teaspoon olive oil to a cup of flaked fish. Taste before adding salt, as tinned salmon is usually already salted.
- The egg garnishHard-boil, cool completely, then push the egg through a fine sieve rather than chopping; the resulting fluff sits on top instead of rolling off. One egg dresses about a dozen rounds.
- Assemble lateThe book gives no holding advice. Toast and butter the bases up to a couple of hours ahead, but top with the salmon and egg no more than fifteen minutes before serving.
Canapés occupy the opening pages of many American sandwich and "dainty" cookery books of the early twentieth century, when the small toasted round was a standard vehicle for a savoury at a card party, a luncheon or the start of a formal dinner. Salmon appears often in these collections because of the canned Pacific salmon industry, which by the 1890s had made a fish that many inland households would never see fresh into a reliable pantry staple sold by the tin. The Worcestershire and olive oil are doing the same work here that mayonnaise does elsewhere in the genre: loosening dry canned fish and giving it a sharp edge. The sieved hard-boiled egg and the sprig of parsley are period garnish, a yellow-and-green finish that turns up on everything from deviled eggs to aspic in books of this decade.