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Caviare Canapes
Cut stale bread in quarter of an inch slices and from these stamp out two inch circles. Saute them until pale brown in a little butter. From some fresh water cress strip off all the good leaves and the most tender portion of the stems. Wash these thoroughly and press in a towel until dry, then pound to a pulp. Press again and then blend with an equal quantity of creamed butter. Spread the hot fine bread with this, and cover with a thin layer of caviare.
A straightforward canapé that depends on two things the original assumes you know: the bread must be dry enough to fry crisp rather than soak, and the watercress butter must be genuinely dry or it will weep into the base.
- Bread and roundsStale here means a day or two old and firm, not hard — a close-crumbed white sandwich loaf works. Quarter-inch slices stamped into two-inch circles give roughly 20-24 rounds from a small loaf; figure three or four per person as a first course.
- Saute, not toastFry in clarified butter if you have it; whole butter's milk solids brown readily and can catch. The rounds should be pale brown and crisp through, not merely coloured on the surface.
- Drying the cressPounding wet watercress makes a slurry that will slide off the bread. Wring the washed leaves hard in a towel, and wring the pulp again after pounding as the recipe directs. A food processor does the pounding, but pulse it — over-processing releases more water.
- Creamed butterButter beaten soft and light, not melted. The recipe's "equal quantity" of cress pulp to butter gives a strongly flavoured green spread; half that cress is more to modern taste if the caviare is delicate.
- "Spread the hot fine bread"Work fast while the rounds are still warm so the butter softens and grips, but let them cool a moment before the caviare goes on. Heat dulls the roe and can cause the eggs to break.
- CaviareIn this period this meant salted sturgeon roe. Wild sturgeon caviar is now restricted under international trade rules; farmed sturgeon, or salmon, trout or lumpfish roe, all serve. A bone, horn or plastic spoon is traditionally preferred, metal being said to give roe a faint tinny taste.
- SeasoningNo salt is called for and none should be added. The caviare and the butter carry the dish, and the cress supplies the pepper.
- TimingAssemble within an hour of serving. The fried rounds can be made earlier and held at room temperature, but once buttered they soften steadily.
Canapés — small fried or toasted bread bases under a savoury topping, the name often said to be borrowed from the French for a couch, the bread being the seat the garnish sits on — spread through American and English entertaining in the late nineteenth century as the formal dinner gave way to lighter, more frequent receptions and card parties. Caviare arrived in that same window as a fashionable item: American sturgeon from the Delaware and the Great Lakes was fished so hard for that market that the stocks collapsed. That a general-purpose household book like this one could include caviare at all, with no explanation of what it was, says a good deal about how ordinary the ingredient briefly became. The watercress butter is the older, thriftier half of the recipe — compound butters worked with pounded herbs were standard kitchen practice long before the canapé had a name.