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Tomato and Cucumber Canapes
Saute rounds of white bread in butter. Fry slices of tomato in deep fat; place one slice of tomato on each round of bread. Dust with salt and pepper, and lightly spread with mayonnaise dressing followed by a thin slice of cucumber. Sprinkle top with finely chopped hard-boiled egg.
A hot-and-cold assembly that lives or dies on timing: the fried tomato has to meet the bread while both are still warm and crisp, and the cucumber and egg go on at the last possible moment.
- Deep-frying bare tomatoThe original drops naked tomato slices into deep fat, which spatters violently and tends to collapse the flesh. Use firm, slightly underripe tomatoes cut a scant half-inch thick, blot them dry, and dredge in seasoned flour or fine crumbs before frying at 375F for about a minute a side.
- Fat for the breadSauteing the rounds in butter over moderate heat gives colour but butter burns before the centre crisps; clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, holds up better. Drain the rounds on paper so the mayonnaise does not slide.
- Cut the rounds firstStamp the bread with a cutter roughly the diameter of your tomato slices, about two inches, and cut the tomato and cucumber to match. Neatness was generally prized in canapes of this sort.
- CucumberSlice it paper-thin, salt it lightly for ten minutes and pat dry, or the water it releases will thin the mayonnaise and soften the fried bread within minutes.
- Mayonnaise dressingIn a book of this vintage "mayonnaise dressing" most likely means a hand-beaten mayonnaise rather than a jarred product, though the term was sometimes used loosely for cooked salad dressings as well. Commercial mayonnaise works; loosen it with a little lemon juice so it spreads without dragging the tomato.
- Hard-boiled eggChop or press the egg through a coarse sieve for the fine, even texture the period wanted. Sieved yolk and white kept separate and applied in bands is one common dressier treatment.
- Assemble to orderThese hold for perhaps fifteen minutes before the base goes limp. Fry the bread and tomato in advance if you must, then top and serve immediately.
- YieldNo quantity is given. A standard sandwich loaf yields roughly 20 two-inch rounds; figure two to three canapes per person as a first course, and about one medium tomato per four canapes.
Canape is generally traced to the French for a couch or covering, and by extension the small piece of fried or toasted bread that a savoury topping sits on; the word is usually said to have entered American cookbooks in the later nineteenth century as formal dinners adopted French service and wanted something to hand round before the soup. Sandwich books of the early twentieth century, of which this is one, often carry a canape chapter, because the two forms share a technique and a purpose: bread cut small, dressed, and eaten from the fingers. The tomato here is worth noting. By the 1900s it appears constantly in salads, sandwiches and canapes as a mark of an up-to-date kitchen. The mayonnaise, the sieved hard-boiled egg and the thin cucumber are the standard garnishing vocabulary of the period, used across dozens of otherwise unrelated dishes.