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Hot Sardine Sandwiches
Bone a number of sardines and rub a generous piece of butter to a smooth paste.
Dust with cayenne pepper or add a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Heat well, spread on buttered toast and serve. Some like a little grated cheese sprinkled over the top. Do not put the pieces of toast together.
A savoury open sandwich of the kind served at tea or as a light supper dish. The instructions assume you know that the butter and the boned sardines are mashed together into a single paste.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none. A standard 3.75 oz tin of sardines with about 2 tablespoons of softened butter makes enough paste for four to six slices of toast. Work it with a fork until no whole fish remain.
- BoningModern brisling and small sardines are packed with the spine in and it is soft enough to mash unnoticed. Larger sardines in oil have a backbone worth lifting out; drain them well first or the paste will be loose.
- "Heat well"The paste is warmed, not cooked — a small saucepan over low heat, or 20 seconds in the microwave, just until it is spreadable and hot to the touch. Taken further the butter splits and the fish turns grainy.
- Cayenne or WorcestershireThe recipe treats them as alternatives, and they are: cayenne gives dry heat, Worcestershire brings salt and anchovy that doubles down on the fish. A pinch of the first, or half a teaspoon of the second, for a whole tin.
- The cheeseThe original only has it "sprinkled over the top," relying on the warmth of the paste. If you want it melted or browned, that is an addition: a minute under a hot broiler will do it. A dry cheddar or Parmesan browns; a soft cheese just weeps oil.
- Open, not closedThe last line is explicit: the slices are served separately. Closing the toast steams it and lets the paste soak through; served open, the toast stays crisp under a hot topping.
- SaltTinned sardines are already salted and Worcestershire adds more. Use unsalted butter and taste before seasoning further.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its flour, and it padded its baking chapters with a general household repertoire — hence a section of sandwiches with no flour in sight. Tinned sardines were among the cheapest reliable protein in a Canadian pantry of the period, keeping well on a shelf and needing no ice, and they turn up throughout Edwardian cookery mashed into pastes for toast, canapés and savouries. The hot open sandwich here belongs to the tradition of the English "savoury," the small sharp, salty course served after dessert or at the end of a supper, of which anchovy toast and Scotch woodcock are the better-known survivors.