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Sardine Sandwiches
Use, in bulk, equal parts of yolks of well-cooked eggs, rubbed to a smooth paste, and the flesh of sardines, freed from skin and bones and pounded in a mortar; season to taste with a few drops of tobasco sauce and lemon juice, and spread as usual. Crackers may be used in the place of bread, if the sandwiches be prepared just before using, otherwise the crackers lose their crispness.
Garnish with slices of lemon and parsley.
A two-ingredient paste held together by nothing but egg yolk and oil, so the proportions and the mashing matter more than they look.
- Equal parts by bulkThe measure is volume, not weight: mash the yolks first, then add an equal loose volume of sardine flesh. Four hard-cooked yolks to roughly a small tin of sardines is about right.
- "Well-cooked eggs"Yolks that are fully set and dry, not jammy. Twelve minutes at a bare simmer, then cooled in cold water, gives a yolk that rubs to powder through a sieve without lumps.
- Skin and bonesModern canned sardines have bones soft enough to eat and add calcium, but they still register as grit in a smooth paste. Lift them out if you want the texture the book intends; otherwise leave them and pound harder.
- Mortar or processorA small food processor does the job in seconds, though it can turn the mix pasty and slick. A fork and the back of a spoon in a bowl gives a better crumb.
- Tobasco"Tobasco" -- a variant spelling of Tabasco common in period cookbooks. A few drops means a few drops; the point is to cut the oil rather than to make the filling hot.
- If it is drySardine yolk paste stiffens fast. A teaspoon of the oil from the tin, or a little softened butter, loosens it to spreading consistency without diluting the flavour.
- BreadThe recipe says only "spread as usual"; thin-cut white bread with crusts trimmed and buttered to the edges is the usual tea-sandwich treatment, and the butter helps keep the oily filling from soaking into the crumb.
- The cracker caveatThe warning is sound. Assemble cracker sandwiches no more than a few minutes before serving, and keep the filling thin, or they soften into paste.
- YieldThe quantities above fill roughly eight to ten small tea sandwiches, cut in triangles or fingers.
Canned sardines were among the first industrial convenience foods to reach American pantries in quantity, imported from the French canneries of Brittany and Nantes from the mid-nineteenth century, with Norwegian packs following later, and domestically canned in Maine from the 1870s. Cookbooks of the period lean on them heavily for luncheon and tea. The pairing with sieved hard-cooked yolk belongs to a whole family of pounded-paste sandwich fillings of the same era, alongside potted ham, anchovy and chicken, and the mortar was the tool for the job. Tabasco has been on the market since 1868, and lemon and parsley are a common finish for cold fish dishes.