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Sardine Sandwiches
Butter thin slices of bread, and trim off the crusts. Remove the sardines carefully from the box, split them open in the centre and remove the bones, heads and tails. Place the halves of sardines over one-half the slices of bread, cover with the other slices, press tightly together, and cut into neat shapes.
A four-line sandwich with almost nothing to convert, so the useful notes are about the fish itself and how the tin has changed since the recipe was written.
- The sardinesPeriod tins held larger fish packed in oil, big enough to split and bone by hand. Many tins today hold small brisling or sild whose bones are soft, fully edible and not worth removing; buy the largest sardines you can find if you want to follow the method as written.
- Blot the oilThe recipe says nothing about the packing oil. Laying the split halves on paper towel for a minute before they go on the bread helps keep it from soaking through the crumb.
- Butter both slicesThe original says only to butter the bread; buttering each inner face, with soft rather than melted butter, helps keep oil and moisture out of the crumb.
- Cutting into shapesPress under a board or a plate for a few minutes first, then cut with a thin sharp knife wiped between cuts. The original trims the crusts before assembling, not after.
- Seasoning the original leaves outThe recipe adds no seasoning at all. A squeeze of lemon, a grind of pepper, or a smear of mustard in the butter keeps the oily fish from tasting flat.
- Yield and servingA tin will stretch to roughly half a dozen sandwiches depending on its size and the number of fish, cut into two or three pieces each. Make them shortly before serving, keep them covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator, and serve cold.
Canned sardines, packed first in France and later in Maine, were among the earliest reliably good preserved foods a household could keep on a shelf, and they let a cook put fish on the table in summer without lighting a fire. Cold suppers, salads, sandwiches and iced drinks belong to that logic: assembled rather than cooked. Boning the fish by hand, which reads as fussiness now, reflects the larger sardines then sold.