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Sardines and Egg Sandwiches
Arrange large boneless sardines on a platter and garnish with nasturtium leaves and blossoms.
Crush with a fork two hard-boiled eggs and mix with a little lemon juice, flavor with salt, paprika and Worcestershire sauce. Spread on white bread and cut in fancy shapes. Serve with the sardines.
A cold plate built for hot weather: a tin of sardines, two eggs, and a loaf of soft white bread. The only real technique here is the seasoning of the egg spread, which the original leaves entirely to the cook.
- Quantities to work fromTwo hard-boiled eggs make roughly a half cup of filling, enough for four to six small cut sandwiches. Figure a 3.75 oz tin of sardines and this amount of egg as a first course or light lunch for two.
- Boneless sardinesLarge boneless sardines are still sold, packed in oil or water. Smaller fish such as brisling will taste right but will not give the whole-fish platter the recipe is arranging. Drain them well on paper before arranging or the platter goes slick and the garnish wilts.
- Binding the eggLemon juice alone will not hold crushed egg together on soft bread. Start with a teaspoon of lemon juice and add a tablespoon of mayonnaise or softened butter so the spread stays put when the slices are cut.
- Seasoning by the dropWorcestershire is assertive against egg. A quarter teaspoon for two eggs is plenty, with salt and a generous pinch of paprika, which in cooking of this kind generally meant a mild sweet paprika used as much for colour as for heat.
- NasturtiumsThe leaves and blossoms are edible and peppery, and were a familiar summer garnish in cookery of this period. Use flowers from a plant you know has not been sprayed; florist blooms are not grown for eating.
- Cutting in fancy shapesUse thin-sliced sandwich bread, spread to the edges, trim the crusts, then cut with a small cutter or a sharp knife. Cut after spreading, not before, and keep the finished shapes under a barely damp towel until serving or the edges curl within minutes.
- Serving coldNothing here needs cooking at the last minute. Boil the eggs in the morning, chill the sardines in their tin, and assemble no more than an hour ahead.
Sandwiches of this kind belong to the era when the icebox and the tinned-fish shelf together made a summer meal possible without lighting the range, which the title Cook and Be Cool suggests is the book's organizing idea. Tinned sardines had been an inexpensive American pantry staple since the Maine canneries scaled up in the late nineteenth century, and by the 1930s "large boneless" was sold as a premium grade, worth arranging whole on a platter rather than mashing. Nasturtiums were a common garnish of the period: the plant was easy to grow, and its leaves and flowers were understood to be edible and pleasantly sharp.