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Sardine Canapes
Take 6 or 8 sardines, mash up with yolk of a hard-cooked egg, pepper and salt to taste, a little lemon juice and 1 teaspoon melted Crisco. Have some rounds of bread fried a pretty golden brown color in hot Crisco, spread the mixture on the croutes; garnish round the edges with some finely chopped parsley and white of 1 egg rubbed through sieve.
A straightforward canape spread that needs almost no translation, though a few of its assumptions belong to the 1910s Crisco kitchen.
- CriscoThe book is a Procter & Gamble promotional volume, so shortening is specified throughout. Any neutral frying fat works for the croutes, and softened butter or good olive oil makes a better binder for the paste than melted shortening, which sets hard and waxy as it cools.
- SardinesSix or eight means small brisling-type fish in oil, not the two or three large fillets that fill some modern tins. Reckon on about 3 oz of drained fish. Drain them well and lift out the backbones if they are the larger sort; oil-packed are closer to the original than water-packed.
- MashingA fork is enough. Mash the hard-cooked yolk into the fish first so it absorbs the oil, then season. A food processor turns the mixture to paste and loses the texture the dish depends on.
- CroutesCut rounds with a 1.5-2 inch cutter from firm white bread, crusts off, and fry in shallow fat until golden on both sides, roughly a minute a side. Drain on paper and let them cool fully before spreading, or the paste slumps. They can equally be brushed with fat and baked at 375F for 8-10 minutes.
- Sieved egg whiteRubbing the cooked white through a fine sieve gives the fluffy snow used as garnish in this period. A coarse grater is a fair substitute; chopping it gives a wetter, heavier result.
- SeasoningSardines and their oil are already salty. Taste before adding any salt, and be generous with the lemon, which is what keeps the mixture from tasting merely oily.
- Assembly and yieldSpread within an hour or so of serving; the paste softens the fried bread if it stands. Six to eight sardines will cover roughly 12 to 16 small rounds, enough for four to six people as an appetizer.
Canapes of pounded fish on fried bread were standard first-course and tea-table fare in Anglo-American cooking by the early twentieth century, and tinned sardines made the idea cheap enough for any household. This particular version comes from one of the Crisco cookbooks issued by Procter & Gamble after the shortening was introduced in 1911, part of a long campaign to persuade cooks to use hydrogenated vegetable fat in place of lard and butter; the product is named throughout the book, which is why a teaspoon of melted shortening turns up as a binder where an older cook would have reached for butter. The finishing touch of hard-cooked white pressed through a sieve over chopped parsley was a common garnish of the period.