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Sardine Sandwiches
2 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 1 dozen sardines 1 tablespoonfuls whipped cream 1 tomato Salt, pepper, and paprika to taste Lettuce leaves Slices of brown or white bread Bone and skin the sardines, then rub through sieve, add cream, Crisco, pulp of tomato and seasonings and mix well. Spread mixture between slices of brown or white bread and butter, stamp out in rounds, in center of each round force a row of whipped cream seasoned with salt and red pepper, place small stamped out leaves of lettuce round the cream.
Sufficient for twelve sandwiches.
A canapé-style sandwich from a Crisco promotional cookbook, so the shortening in the filling is advertising as much as cookery. The one thing that decides whether these work is moisture control: tomato pulp and whipped cream in a sandwich that is then cut into rounds will turn the bread to paste if you are careless.
- Drain the tomatoHalve the tomato, squeeze out seeds and jelly, and use only the firm pulp, chopped fine and blotted on paper. Untreated tomato pulp is mostly water and will soak through the bread within minutes.
- Crisco, and what to use insteadCrisco was launched in 1911 and this book exists to sell it; two tablespoons of melted shortening here is a binder and a fat carrier, nothing more. Softened unsalted butter does the same job with better flavour, and the paste spreads more cleanly when it is soft rather than melted.
- A dozen sardinesDepending on their size, that is one small tin of brisling-type sardines or two of the larger sort, packed in oil and drained. In modern tins the backbones are soft enough to mash, so the boning step matters less than it did, though the skin is usually still on.
- Rub through a sieveA food processor or a fork in a bowl gets you there faster. The point of the sieve was texture: the filling should be a smooth paste with no fibrous bits, since it is being spread thin and cut into rounds.
- Whipped cream, unsweetenedPlain heavy cream, whipped, in both places. The tablespoon in the filling goes in unseasoned and the mixture is then seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika; only the cream piped on top is seasoned with salt and red pepper. Whip it firm; soft cream will slump off the rounds and weep into the bread.
- "Force a row"Pipe it, through a small star tube. A zip-top bag with a corner cut off works if you are not fussy about the ridges.
- Season lightlyTinned sardines are salty on their own. Taste the paste before adding any salt; the paprika and pepper matter more than the salt does.
- Stamping the roundsCut with a small plain or fluted cutter after the sandwich is assembled, using firm close-grained bread. A good deal of each slice is lost as trim, which is the price of the shape.
- Yield and timingTwelve small rounds, enough for four to six people as part of a tea or cocktail spread. Assemble and pipe within an hour of serving and keep them covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator; they do not hold overnight.
This comes from a cookbook written to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening Procter & Gamble introduced in 1911, and the fat's appearance in a sardine sandwich filling tells you more about the book's purpose than about the dish. The sandwich itself belongs to the Edwardian and early American fashion for the fancy tea sandwich: crustless, stamped into rounds and diamonds, piped with something, and set out in quantity for afternoon calls and card parties. Tinned sardines were a staple of that repertoire because they were cheap, shelf-stable and needed no cooking, and canned Atlantic and Mediterranean sardines had been widely available in Britain and North America since the mid-nineteenth century. The piped cream and the cut-out lettuce leaf are pure garnish in the style of the period, when a sandwich meant for a tea table was expected to be decorated as carefully as a cake.