Posh Toast.

Toast has many guises in the English-speaking culinary world, as we have seen this week. It is a staple at breakfast, very desirable at afternoon tea, and is happy to appear at lunch or supper alongside a bowl of soup. It can be cold and austere, or hot and buttery, it can be embellished with any number of delicious spreads, and is very supportive of eggs, or melted cheese (have we remembered Welsh Rabbit this week?) or leftover stew, or pretty well anything else - including, as we saw earlier in the week, a saucy pile of stewed fruit. As if to prove its versatility, slightly burnt toast also became an ingredient in some of the ersatz coffee recipes of the nineteenth century.

You will be pleased to know that toast rounds out its range with a number of posh roles too. The first that comes to mind is Melba Toast - the ultra-thin crisp toast invented by Escoffier for the opera singer, Nellie Melba. Melba-foods deserve their own story, one day soon, methinks. So, what else is there?

In the last decade or so of the nineteenth century in the English-speaking world, a new kind of whet became fashionable – the canapé. We use the word fairly loosely today to describe any small pre-dinner or cocktail party ‘nibble’, but originally a canapé referred specifically to a small savoury with a base of bread or toast. Actually, this is not quite true. A couple of hundred years before it was a food item, in France a canapé was a sofa. I can see what appears to be the connection here - an edible canapé is a little something resting comfortably on a toast ‘pillow’ - but I have no idea who was the perpetrator of the change in usage of the word. Please do enlighten me if you know the answer.


There is a nice explanation of the canapé in the 1905 edition of the famous The Boston Cooking School Cook Book.

Canapés
Canapés are made by cutting bread in slices one-fourth inch thick, and cutting slices in strips four inches long by one and one-half inches wide, or in circular pieces. Then
bread is toasted, fried in deep fat, or buttered and browned in the oven, and covered with a seasoned mixture of eggs, cheese, fish, or meat, separately or in combination. Canapés are served hot or cold, and used in place of oysters at a dinner or luncheon. At a gentleman's dinner they are served with a glass of Sherry before entering the dining- room.

And here are a couple of very posh versions of the canapé, from the same book – they will nicely use up that lobster coral and crab meat you have lurking in the back of the fridge.


Canapés Martha
Beat yolk one egg, add one and one-half tablespoons cream, one-fourth teaspoon salt, one-eighth teaspoon paprika, one-fourth teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce, and a few
grains cayenne; then add one-fourth pound cheese cut in small pieces, and cook until smooth, stirring constantly.
Spread on sauted slices of bread, cut in fancy shapes, and cover with finely chopped lobster meat held together with a thick sauce made of Chicken Stock or cream, garnish with rings of whites of “hard-boiled” eggs, yolks of “hard-boiled” eggs, and lobster coral forced through a strainer, and rings of olives.


Canapés Lorenzo
Toast slices of bread cut in shape of horseshoes. Cream two tablespoons butter, and add one teaspoon white of egg. Spread slices of bread, rounding with Crab Mixture, cover with creamed butter, sprinkle with cheese, and brown in the oven. Serve on a napkin, ends towards centre of dish, and garnish with parsley.
Crab Mixture. Finely chop crab meat, season with salt, cayenne, and a few drops of lemon juice, then moisten with Thick White Sauce. Lobster meat may be used in place of crab meat.


Quotation for the Day.

Ultimately, the toaster is an apology for the quality of our bread ... the toaster represents a heroic attempt to redeem our packaged bread …every piece of toast is a tragedy.
Arthur Berger.

Highwayman Food.

I am now settled temporarily in Dublin, and - wonder of wonders! seem to have good internet access. In the muddle I "lost" yesterdays' planned post, so here it is, a day late:


September 21 in 1705 was the birthday of Dick Turpin, the romantically infamous English highwayman whose most legendary act was an impossible ride from London to York (a distance of 200 miles) in eleven hours on his famous mare, Black Bess.

What has this to do with food, do you ask? Only this – that I came across a thoroughly twentieth century recipe for Oysters Dick Turpin, and, having seen his grave in York on my last visit there, I was intrigued. It is a variation on the Angels on Horseback theme. I guess the black prune represents Black Bess?

Oysters Dick Turpin.
For these a large prune is hollowed out and filled first with a good pinch of pounded butter [and?] almonds and then with a large oyster. A small piece of fat bacon is wrapped around the prune, and the whole crisply fried.
The Times Nov 11, 1922

The same newspaper feature “On Oysters” had another “adaptation” of the Angel on Horseback idea – although it is an adaptation I do not understand, as it is a multi-ingredient, very fiddly construction, and there are no prunes. Surely prunes are essential to Angels on Horseback?

For an entrée the Angel on Horseback can be delightfully adapted as follows:
Let twenty-four oysters boil in their own liquor, then drain them and reserve a half pint of the liquor. Chop the oysters very fine, mix with this liquor, and just bring it to the boil. Then add three mushrooms and a small cupful of the white meat of a chicken, both chopped fine, and mixed with half a cupful of cream. Melt a tablespoonful of butter, and mix with two tablespoonfuls of flour, and stir into the stock, which should be boiling. Add a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, twelve drops of onion juice, salt and pepper, and then the yolks of two eggs.When all is well mixed, set it aside to grow cold. Then make into little rolls, about two inches by an inch, cut slices of bacon as thin as possible – about half a pound will be wanted – wrap each roll of the mixture in bacon, dip into a light batter, and fry in boiling fat, serving immediately.


Quotation for the Day.
What will happen to me, as the oyster said when he very inadvertently swallowed the gooseberry bush, nobody can tell.
Edward Lear (1812-1888)

A French aristocrat living in England in the 1930’s would be just the person to give advice to a young wife, on what to do when YOUR HUSBAND BRINGS HOME AN INFLUENTIAL BUSINESS FRIEND, now wouldn’t he?

Take heed, my young friend-who-is-to-be married on Saturday. And be prepared. Have your freezer, pantry, and wine-cellar well stocked, just in case, for HUSBAND’s often spring these INFLUENTIAL guests upon their wives, just as said wives are heating up the leftover meatloaf from yesterday.

The Vicomte de Maduit has a number of suggested menus for such events as ‘Before Wimbledon’, ‘After Eighteen Holes of Golf (in Cold Weather), and Before the Races.’ Here is his suggestion for when YOUR HUSBAND BRINGS HOME AN INFLUENTIAL BUSINESS FRIEND.

Grape-fruit maraschino.
Scotch Broth.
Fillets of Sole Anne-Marie.
Pheasant à la Belle Alliance.
Pommes Anna - Peas Sautés.
Soufflé à la Vanille.
Canapés Ivanhoe.
Wines: Montrachet and Chambertin.

The good Vicomte of course gives recipes for his suggested dishes. The old British tradition of ending a meal with a savoury dish seems to have gone by the board in these modern times, and we would be more likely to serve the canapés as an appetiser.

Canapés Ivanhoe.
Remove the skin and bones of a dried haddock, chop it up, and pound it with butter and a little cream. Cook this slowly. Then spread thickly on rounds of fried bread and garnish with pickled walnuts.

Quotation for the Day …

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked. Winston Churchill.

Whetting the Appetite.

February 27 ...

There is not much that is new under the sun, after all, is there? And I don’t mean in terms of technological ideas. The vague (or not so vague) unease or fear about Pleasure and an ‘unnatural appletite’ for eating has been around for a long time. A Mr. John Norris who wrote A Practical Treatise Concerning Humility in 1707 may have been a worthy Christian gentleman, but he had a killjoy attitude to food, if the following paragraph is any indication:

“Pleasure is the thing proposed, and because there can be none without some Appetite, new ways are invented and contrived to make an Artificial one, when that which is Natural is either wanting or satisfied. They must have whets before they Eat, and lest that should not do, they muft have the most studied and exquisite sauces when they eat, and if by the help of both thefe they fhould happen to eat too much, then they must have proper stomach Liquors to carry it off, and to create a new Appetite. So that Mens Lives seem to be a continued Circulation of Eating and preparing to Eat; and the great intention of Cookery is to make Men Eat who have no mind to Eat, and to Eat on after the natural and reasonable ends of Eating are serv'd.”

I don’t see what is wrong with Life being a continued Circulation of Eating and Preparing to Eat, do you? Sounds like a summary of my own life.

Some words do fall by the wayside as time progresses however. We don’t use the word ‘whets’ much anymore to describe things we use to whet our appetite before a meal. The word comes from the word “whetting”, to mean “an act of sharpening” (on a whetstone), and of course originally referred to the sharpening of a blade. When it was first used in respect of sharpening the appetite, it meant a drink, but somewhere along the way it became attached to little food items, and further along the way it got displaced by hors d’oeuvre, appetiser, savouries, amuse-bouche, etc.

In medieval times, cooks-who-would-be-artists and sculptors made huge constructions resembling figures of saints, castles, mythical animals, etc out of “food”. Sometimes they even had moving parts, made noises and did such things as produce fountains of wine. These were called “subtelties” and were the original “entrements” (“between the courses”) which functioned as entertainment and as statements of power or propaganda to impress or awe the guests at a feast. They knew how to have fun with food in the Middle Ages.

“Whets” or little appetisers are an opportunity for the smaller-scale modern cook to have artistic fun with food, and a little English book called, most appropriately Artistic Savouries (undated but probably late 1930’s) has some hilarious ideas. If you feel like deveopling your bread-carving expertise you can make appetisers in the form of little tea-cups (how could I resist Mock Tea Cups). The book also has such delights as appetisers in the style of Window boxes, Washing Tubs, Mock Ears of Corn, Cigarettes, Mock Radishes, flowers, pipes and all sorts of other lovely mini-sculptures suitable for those who want to play with their food before they serve and eat it.

Tasses à Thé Fausse.
(Mock Cups of Tea)
Plain light pastry.
A little white of egg and beetroot colouring.
Shrimps.
½ oz. Shippam's anchovy paste.
1 tablespoonful white sauce without salt.
1 small teaspoonful of cream.
½ teaspoonful caramel.
Cut some shapes of stale bread to represent tiny tea-cups and cover with pastry. Pinch one side to form a handle, make a slit in the opposite side and fold over, having brushed the overlap with white of egg, press well into the little shape and prick all over with a small fork. Bake in a quick oven and having carefully removed the bread, brush edges and handles with white of egg, to which has been added colouring. Having made the saucers by covering little rounds of bread with pastry, brush the edges of these with the colouring. Now place a little anchovy in the centre of each saucer and set a cup on each. Three parts fill the cups with shrimps and having mixed the anchovy sauce, caramel and cream, pour a little over each cup of shrimps.
Serve cold garnished with mustard and cress, or parsley.

Radises Fausse
(Mock Radishes)
Plain pastry.
¼ Ib. minced ham.
1 oz. oiled butter.
1 oz. white bread-crumbs.
1 egg.
Beetroot colouring.
Mint or watercress.
Mix together the ham, butter, crumbs and enough egg to make a smooth paste, then roll into shapes to represent small radishes, cover with pastry and bake. Add beetroot colouring to a small portion white of egg and brush over each little shape, replace in the oven to dry and if not the desired shade repeat the process. Make a small opening in the larger end of each and insert a tiny branch of watercress or mint.
Serve hot or cold.

Tomorrow’s Story …

On Foie Gras.

Quotation for the Day …

The true gourmet, like the true artist, is one of the unhappiest creatures existent. His trouble comes from so seldom finding what he constantly seeks: perfection. Ludwig Bemelmans.