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Sardine Fritters (German)
Cut slices of bread into equal-sized shapes more than 1/2 inch thick, and enough of them to form a ring around the edge of a small dish. Beat 2 or 3 eggs and mix them with rather more than their measure of milk. Soak the bread slices in this, and fry them in butter a delicate pale brown. Lay the slices around the edge of your dish, letting one slice rest on the edge of the other. Lay poached eggs in the middle of the dish, and put on them the following sauce, which must be thick enough to spread: Mince the yolks of 4 hard-boiled eggs quite small. Chop fine some parsley, a little sprig of tarragon, and some pimpernel or burnet. Melt a piece of butter in a stewpan, put in the minced herbs, and stir them a few minutes to soften; then add salt, pepper, and the minced eggs, with a dessertspoonful of gravy, the same of lemon juice or vinegar, a spoonful of capers, a little oil and mustard, and, if required, a few crumbs to thicken. Stir all together. Put a small tuft on each poached egg, and spread the rest on the wreath of sippets. Take about a dozen of sardines, bone them, and mince them small with a piece of butter and a little cayenne. Divide and spread this on the sippets; place them to warm for a minute in the oven, and serve.
This is a composed egg dish rather than a batter fritter: fried bread rounds arranged as a wreath, poached eggs in the centre, a chopped-egg herb sauce over everything, and minced sardine butter spread on the bread. Assemble in order and have the dish warm before the eggs go in.
- SippetsThe fried bread slices are what the recipe later calls sippets. Cut them a good half-inch thick from a firm white loaf so they survive the egg-and-milk soak without collapsing in the pan.
- The custard soakTwo or three eggs beaten with slightly more than their own volume of milk comes to roughly 3/4 cup milk for 3 eggs. The bread should be moistened through but still hold its shape in the pan.
- Pimpernel or burnetBoth names point to salad burnet, a mild cucumber-scented herb rarely sold now. Chervil, or a little chopped cucumber skin with extra parsley, gives the same effect; tarragon should stay a single small sprig or it will dominate.
- "Gravy"In a book of this period gravy means meat stock or pan juices, not thickened sauce. A dessertspoonful is about 2 teaspoons, so a couple of teaspoons of good beef or chicken stock.
- Sauce consistencyThe hinge is the instruction that it be thick enough to spread. Keep it off direct heat once the eggs go in, add breadcrumbs a pinch at a time, and stop while it still holds a soft tuft on a spoon.
- Sardine butterModern tinned sardines are soft and their bones are edible, so they mash with a fork; drain them well or the oil will make the bread soggy. The recipe specifies only 'a piece of butter' and 'a little cayenne'.
- The oven stepA minute to warm through is all that is meant; the recipe gives no oven heat. The poached eggs are already cooked and will set hard if the dish sits in the heat.
- YieldThe recipe gives no number of servings: a small dish, a dozen sardines and the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, with the number of poached eggs left to the cook.