Christmas is probably the only time I bother with appetisers or canapés proper; usually I am quite content to stick a bowl of fancy crisps on the dining table, and let my husband make sure everyone’s drinks are topped up. But Christmas is different. Christmas demands canapés.
And, given the Vintage Chef moniker, I tend to favour the old-fashioned, the retro, the kitsch; the deviled eggs, the vol au vents – and the devils on horseback.
The dish is thought to date back to Victorian times, when it would be served not as an appetiser or hors d’oeuvre, but as a savoury: a kind of palate-cleanser that came after the main meal to be eaten with the dregs of wine; they have since migrated to canapé status. As is so often the case, the etymology or rationale behind the naming of the dish is in dispute: some suggest that as with devilled kidneys, the devil in the name refers to the heat in the mustard that some recipes employ – but few recipes require mustard, so this seems unlikely.
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