Party Food: Small & Savo

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

To me the most noticeable thing about party giving in the second half of the twentieth century is dips. Dips and their accompanying chips (pages 233 and 238-239), Crudités (pages 67-69) or other things eaten for their dippability are an almost inevitable part of any informal party. 'While many of the pleasantly gloppy mixtures owe their existence to cultures around the world, it is my belief that they strode front and center at cocktail parties in America where at one time they were so important there were special chip-and-dip platters for serving them. It is my guess that the virtual disappearance of household help after World War II and in the ensuing decades brought with it the virtual disappearance of the passed canapé and hors d'oeuvre at any but the most formal-probably catered, possibly at a hotel-event.

Dips require serving dishes but not individual plates, eaters but not waiters. We can stand and eat dips, at the same time managing a drink with our other hand. Most of them have the added advantage that they can be chip-and-dip platters for serving them. It is my guess that the virtual disappearance of household help after World War II and in the ensuing decades brought with it the virtualdisappearance of the passed canapé and hors d'oeuvre at any but the most formal -- probably catered, possibly at a hotel -- event.

Dips require serving dishes but not individual plates, eaters but not waiters. We can stand and eat dips, at the same time managing a drink with our other hand. Most of them have the added advantage that they can be made ahead and kept in the refrigerator for several days -- a great help when planning a largish party.

The prototype of the dip may be the cocktail sauce. Perhaps it was some genius of a party giver who first stationed the cooked, tail-on shrimp next to a bowl of spicy tomato sauce so people could dunk their shrimp. Toothpicks then came into their own. In its 1946 edition, The Joy of Cooking called for hollowing out a red cabbage, filling it with mayonnaise and surrounding it with shrimp on toothpicks.

Many of today's dips started life elsewhere as a sauce. Others were part of the cold mixed hors d'oeuvre table. They range from the fish salads of Scandinavia, such as Herring in Sweet Mustard Sauce (page 184), through Romanian Eggplant Dip (page 12), to some of the meze of Greece, such as Taramasalata (page 31). However, far and away the most made dip in America had no life except as a dip, although its ancestors may include all the creamed dishes that began "Mix a can of cream of mushroom soup with. . . ." It is that combination of sour cream and dried soup mix -- onion or vegetable -- whose recipe has come to dwell on the box of the soup-mix maker.

The "California Dip" made with sour cream and onion-soup mix can be dated accurately. It started as a groundswell recipe. In 1954, Lipton's noticed that the sales of its soup mix were surging in California. When they investigated, they found the dip. Even in 1950, Heinz was promoting a "dunking sauce" made with spices and cream cheese. In 1951 Kraft, the owners of Philadelphia cream cheese and Breakstone's sour cream, promoted a clam appetizer dip. The first reference to the word "dip" I have found -- but it probably was in spoken use earlier, as Helen Evans Brown could assume that people knew what she meant when she wrote about guacamole in 1952 -- is in the West Coast Cook Book: "Here is our favorite dip." Incidentally, it still is a favorite -- guacamole. Friends who would die of embarrassment before they admitted to liking -- I still do -- that fifties onion concoction will dig into salsa with blue corn tortilla chips or happily serve a tapenade or a bagna cauda.

As much as to ingredients, dips probably owe a large debt to the development of the blender, originally marketed in 1937 for making drinks, both ice cream and alcoholic. It wasn't until blenders came back on the market after World War II that they really got used for food. The introduction of the food processor varied the possibilities even more.

Long before dips came on the scene, English pubs were putting out on the bar crocks full of cheese spreads to be flattened with knives onto British biscuits. The spreads were made with the last of a Cheddar or Stilton that had been creamed with butter and Port, Sherry or Cognac. These spreads date from an even earlier custom of serving a large cheese such as a Stilton with a small rounded shovel called a cheese scoop. A hole would be cut in the top of the rind or wax outer cover of the cheese and the cheese would be scooped out until only the rind and a modicum of cheese remained. By this time, the cheese would be rather dry, and Port would be sloshed into the well to moisten the cheese and let the last bits be scooped out. Coming forward in time, manufacturers realized how popular the crocks of spread were becoming and started marketing cheese as a spread all ready in crocks.

Americans were spreading their equivalent of biscuits -- crackers -- with cream cheese, white and bland, mixed with any number of elements such as olives, nuts and smoked salmon and seasonings such as paprika, chives and dill to make spreads. In more recent years, the cheese is often cut with low-fat yogurt to make a less caloric and slightly more acid spread.

Both English and American cheese spreads had an earlier model as well, the softened butter spreads in tea sandwiches. The butters were used in a thin slick on bread or toast as the underpinning of canapés.

This chapter contains some of all these kinds of dips, spreads and sauces. If any of them are too thick for the way you want to serve them, thin with water or other liquid. Remember the dips will be thinner at room temperature than straight from the refrigerator. . . .

Continues...

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Excerpted from Party Food: Small & Savo by Barbara Kafka Copyright ©2006 by Barbara Kafka. Excerpted by permission.
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