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Creamed Sardines
1 box sardines 1 cup cream sauce 1 chopped hard-boiled egg 1 tablespoon chopped parsley Drain the sardines from their oil, and if they are not boneless, remove the bones. Heat thoroughly in the sauce; add the egg and parsley; serve on squares of toasted bread or crackers. Frogs' legs
A chafing-dish supper dish that assumes you know how to make a cup of cream sauce and have a tin of sardines in the cupboard. Both assumptions still hold.
- "1 box sardines"A flat tin; the common modern size is 3.75 oz net weight, rather less once drained. Sardines packed in oil suit this better than water-packed, which are leaner and fall apart faster.
- Cream sauceThe book means a basic white sauce: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk or thin cream, cooked until it coats the spoon and seasoned with salt and pepper. Make it a shade thinner than you think you want, since it tightens as it sits over the flame.
- BonesMost tinned sardines today are sold with the fine bones in, and they are soft enough to eat. If you dislike the texture, split each fish along the belly and lift out the spine before it goes into the sauce.
- The hingeFold rather than stir. The fillets are already cooked and will shred into paste if worked, so slide them into warm sauce and heat only until steaming, a minute or two.
- Chafing dishGentle heat -- a small heavy saucepan over low heat is all this needs. If you are working in a chafing dish over a spirit lamp, as such dishes often were, keep the flame low; the recipe itself specifies only "heat thoroughly."
- Egg and parsley lastBoth go in off the heat or at the very end. The chopped egg turns granular and the parsley grey if held over the flame.
- SeasoningSardines are salty and the sauce is bland; taste after combining, and a squeeze of lemon or a few drops of anchovy essence lifts it considerably.
- YieldEnough for two as a light supper, or four small toast squares each as a savoury course.
- The stray words"Frogs' legs" at the end is the heading of the following recipe, not an ingredient.
Chafing-dish cookery had a long vogue in American households from the 1890s through the 1920s, and books of the period routinely gave it its own chapter: dishes that could be assembled at the table over a spirit lamp, in a bachelor's rooms or after a party, without troubling the kitchen or the cook. Tinned sardines were ideal for it, being shelf-stable, already cooked, and cheap enough to keep on hand. Small oil-packed sardines had been canned in Brittany since the early nineteenth century and were a staple import, and Maine and Norwegian packs joined them on American shelves. The formula here follows a pattern familiar from chafing-dish cookery of the period: something out of a tin, a cup of cream sauce, chopped hard-boiled egg for body and parsley for colour, served on toast.