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Caviare Sandwiches
Mix half a can caviare, 1 teaspoon onion juice and lemon juice to taste. Cut thin rounds of bread, butter and spread.
A three-line sandwich filling that depends entirely on the quality of the roe and on restraint with everything else. The chief difficulty for a modern cook is that the original quantity is tied to a tin size that no longer exists in any fixed form.
- "Half a can"Tin sizes for domestic caviare in this period were not standardised, and the quantity intended here cannot now be recovered. Work by taste; an ounce or so of roe will cover a dozen small rounds.
- What "caviare" meant hereThe recipe does not specify a roe, and a general-purpose Canadian cookbook of this period need not have meant sturgeon roe from the Caspian. Salted lumpfish, whitefish or salmon roe is a reasonable modern substitute; a fine sturgeon caviare is better left unseasoned.
- Onion juiceGrate a piece of onion on the fine side of a box grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate directly into a bowl and use the liquid. A teaspoon is a lot against 1 oz of roe; start with half.
- Lemon, added lastLemon -- the recipe has the lemon juice mixed in with the roe, to taste. Acid can dull and firm the eggs if it stands on them, so add only a few drops and stir with a fork rather than beating, so the grains stay whole.
- Butter is structuralButter -- buttering the bread before spreading helps seal it against moisture from the roe. Have it properly soft and take it to the edges.
- The breadThin rounds cut from a close-grained white loaf with a small round cutter; the recipe specifies no size. Crusts are irrelevant since the cutter removes them, and slightly stale bread cuts more cleanly than fresh.
- Yield and holdingThe recipe gives no yield, and it depends on the ambiguous quantity of roe and the cutter used. Assemble within an hour of serving and keep covered with a barely damp cloth in the refrigerator; the roe weeps if it stands.
- SaltAdd none. Cured roe carries all the salt the sandwich needs, and a salted butter will already push it far enough.
Sandwiches of this kind belong to a specific social moment: the afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon, where food was meant to be eaten in two bites. The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell flour, and its sandwich pages served that purpose by assuming a household that baked its own close-grained white loaf. Caviare in such a book is a nod at cosmopolitan luxury rather than a serious call for Caspian roe; in the Great Lakes and along the Atlantic coast, North American sturgeon fisheries had supplied cheap salted roe through the late nineteenth century. The onion juice and lemon suit a workmanlike salted roe, which is much improved by both.