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Caviar Canapes
Mix three tablespoonfuls of caviar paste with one tablespoonful of lemon juice and quarter of a teaspoonful of paprika. Rub two tablespoonfuls of fresh butter to a cream and add the paste. Spread on thin slices of bread. Garnish with water cress, chopped fine. Fine for Dutch luncheon.
A three-ingredient spread that lives or dies on the quality of the caviar and the coldness of the butter. Nothing here needs cooking, so the only real work is in the assembly.
- Caviar pasteProbably a pressed or potted caviar of the kind sold in jars or tubes rather than loose grains, though the term was used loosely. A modern jar of lumpfish, whitefish or salmon roe will work, but mash it only lightly and expect a saltier, wetter result; drain it first if it is packed in brine.
- Butter first, then pasteCream the butter until it is genuinely soft and pale before the caviar goes in, or the paste will not disperse and the spread will streak. Room-temperature unsalted butter, worked with a fork, is right; melted butter separates as it cools.
- Don't salt itCaviar paste carries a great deal of salt already. Taste before you think about adding any, and use unsalted butter for the same reason.
- The breadCanapes of this period were generally cut thin from a close-crumbed white loaf, and were often lightly toasted or dried so they stay crisp under a wet topping, though this recipe does not call for it. Untoasted bread will soften fairly quickly.
- PaprikaPaprika in cookbooks of this period generally meant a sweet, mild sort, used for colour and gentle warmth rather than heat. Modern smoked paprika is a different thing entirely and will overwhelm the roe.
- WatercressChop it just before serving; cut cress darkens and weeps quite quickly. Whole sprigs keep better, though the recipe asks for it chopped fine.
- Yield and timingThree tablespoons of paste with two of butter makes about five tablespoons of spread, enough for something in the region of a dozen to sixteen small canapes depending on size. Assemble not far ahead and keep them cold and covered.
- "Dutch luncheon"A cold beer-and-cold-cuts spread rather than anything from the Netherlands. The note is a serving suggestion: these belong alongside sausage, cheese and pickles, not at a formal seated meal.
Caviar arrived on American tables in quantity at the end of the nineteenth century, and much of it was domestic: sturgeon from the Delaware and the Great Lakes supported a large fishery, and pressed caviar was cheap enough to appear in a book like this one. The canape itself was a French borrowing that American hostesses took up enthusiastically, the word meaning a couch or sofa, with the bread often said to be the seat on which the garnish sits. The "Dutch luncheon" of the last line is a period Americanism, sometimes traced to Deutsch rather than to Holland though the derivation is contested, describing an informal cold table with beer, and it tells you that this book expected its readers to be entertaining casually as well as formally. Within a generation the sturgeon fishery had collapsed from overfishing, and caviar shifted from an everyday relish to the luxury it is now.