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Sardines
(French fashion.) Remove the skins and tails from about a dozen sardines and heat them in the oven. Heat some butter or oil in the blazer of one chafing-dish, and in it sauté some bits of bread of suitable shape to serve under the sardines. Put in the blazer of
A simple chafing-dish savoury: warmed boneless sardines served on fried croutons. The text breaks off mid-sentence, so the second pan's contents are lost — in period cookbooks this is almost always a mustard butter, a maître d'hôtel butter, or a lemon-and-butter sauce poured over at the table.
- The blazerThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish, the one that sits directly over the flame; the hot-water pan beneath is the bain-marie. Any wide shallow skillet stands in for it, and a heavy 8–10 inch frying pan over low heat is the practical substitute.
- Skinning and boningPeriod recipes, this one included, commonly called for the skins to be stripped. Modern brisling and small sardines have tender skin and soft bones that can be left as they are; drain them well on paper instead.
- Heating in the ovenThey only need warming through — 300F for four or five minutes on a shallow dish. Sardines are already fully cooked in the tin, and longer heat dries them out and breaks them apart when lifted.
- The croutonsCut crustless bread to the length of a sardine, about 3 by 1 inch, and fry in butter or oil until golden on both sides. Cut them before frying, not after; fried bread crumbles under a knife.
- Butter or oilThe recipe allows either. The oil drained from the tin is one usable option and carries the sardine flavour into the bread. Butter browns faster, so keep the heat moderate if you use it.
- The missing finishThe text breaks off before the second blazer's contents are named, so the finish is lost. One plausible reconstruction: work a tablespoon of butter with a teaspoon of made mustard, a squeeze of lemon and a little cayenne, melt it in the blazer, and spoon it over the sardines on their croutons. Serve at once, while the bread is still crisp.
- YieldA dozen sardines makes an appetiser for four, or a savoury course for six alongside other chafing-dish items.
Chafing-dish cookery had a considerable vogue in America either side of 1900, promoted as the equipment of the bachelor, the student and the hostess who wanted to cook in front of her guests rather than behind a kitchen door. Sardines suited it perfectly: the tinned fish was cheap, shelf-stable, already cooked, and by the 1890s widely available from both French and Maine canneries, so a creditable hot savoury could be produced at the table in five minutes. The "French fashion" label in such books normally just denotes a manner of preparation, though it is tempting to connect it with the sardine's Breton and Nantes associations — the industry at Nantes was among the earliest to can fish commercially in the first half of the nineteenth century — and with the French habit of serving small hot savouries on fried bread. Serving fish on a crouton may follow much the same logic as anchovy toast or the British savoury course: the fried bread carries the oil, adds texture, and arguably lets a soft fillet be eaten with the fingers or a fork without falling apart.