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Sardine Sandwiches
Remove the bone from sardines; rub to a paste with a little Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice. Butter and cut thin slices of Boston brown bread, spread with the sardine mixture, cover with another slice, and cut across, making them semi-circular in shape.
A short, workable filling that depends almost entirely on the quality of the tinned fish and on using bread firm enough to hold a wet paste.
- Why the sandwiches are semi-circularBoston brown bread was steamed in a cylindrical mould or a tin can, so each slice came out round. Cutting one of those rounds across the middle produces two half-moons. Modern loaf bread will not do this, though canned brown bread is still sold in some markets.
- Sardines and bonesMost tinned sardines today are small enough that the backbone is soft and edible, so the instruction to remove it is optional. Larger sardines in oil still benefit from having the spine lifted out, since it is the one part that stays gritty in a paste.
- Drain the oilBlot the fish on paper before mashing. Sardines packed in oil carry enough liquid to dampen brown bread, so work the filling to a stiff paste.
- Seasoning by taste, not measure"A little" Worcestershire and lemon juice leaves the seasoning to taste, since tinned sardines vary in salt. Start with about half a teaspoon of each per tin and taste; the lemon should cut the oil without loosening the paste.
- Butter both facesThe butter is structural here, not just flavour. A thin film on the cut surfaces seals the crumb against the fish oil and keeps the sandwich intact if it sits on a plate.
- QuantityOne standard tin, roughly 3 oz drained, spreads about four rounds of brown bread, making two sandwiches cut into four half-moons.
- Holding and servingAssemble no more than an hour ahead, keep covered with a damp cloth or wrap, and refrigerate. Cut the rounds just before they go to the table so the edges stay clean.
Boston brown bread is a New England steamed bread of rye, cornmeal and wheat sweetened with molasses, traditionally steamed in a cylindrical mould or an emptied tin, which is why its slices come out round. Tinned sardines were cheap and shelf-stable and were widely available in American kitchens by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, useful for the fashionable afternoon tea sandwich. Sardine sandwiches appear in the sandwich chapters of compilation cookbooks of the period, when sandwiches were wanted for teas, card parties and picnics, and fancy cutting was admired; the dark molasses bread against oily salt fish is a marked contrast.