Devils on horseback: the most retro of canapés

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. Others state categorically that the dish is named after Normal invaders who wrapped bacon around their armour to intimidate their conquests. To be fair, if a Norman warrior approached me on a horse wrapped in bacon, I’d probably be pretty intimidated, but that’s about as far as the plausibility goes. Their antonym, angels on horseback, refers to shucked oysters wrapped in bacon and skewered, but there is no consensus on whether the angelic shellfish sheds any light on the diabolical prune origins.

Devils on horseback have long been a Christmas favourite, but despite their classic status, they’ve rather gone out of fashion. You can’t move for pigs in blankets in the supermarket, and every sort of canapé you can dream of (24 mini chicken kievs, mini dressed crabs, a dozen Marmite crumpets), but devils on horseback are much harder to come by.