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Creamed Sardines
Drain from oil one small box sardines, remove backbones from fish, then mash. Melt one-fourth cup butter, add one-fourth cup soft stale bread crumbs, and one cup cream. When thoroughly heated add two "hard-boiled" eggs finely chopped, the sardines, salt, pepper, and paprika to taste.
Serve on pieces of toasted bread.
Welsh Rarebit I 1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon corn-starch 1/2 cup thin cream 1½ lb. soft mild cheese cut in small pieces ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon mustard Few grains cayenne Toast or wafer crackers Melt butter, add corn-starch, and stir until well mixed, then add cream gradually, while stirring constantly, and add cream gradually, while stirring constantly, and cook two minutes. Add cheese, and stir until cheese is melted.
Season, and serve on zephyrettes or bread toasted on one side, rarebit being poured over untoasted side.
Much of the success of a rarebit depends upon the quality of the cheese. A rarebit should be smooth and of a creamy consistency, never stringy.
A chafing-dish supper dish from the era when sardines came in flat tins and the blazer pan came out after the theatre. The whole thing takes about ten minutes once the eggs are cooked.
- Gentle heat throughoutThis is a thin cream mixture bound only by the crumbs, so it will scorch or separate if pushed. Over direct heat keep it just below a simmer; in a chafing dish, use the hot-water pan rather than the flame alone.
- One small box sardinesThe period tin was roughly a quarter-pound, close to today's standard 3 3/4 oz size. The recipe calls for one, drained; a second tin will push the fish flavour forward if you want it.
- BackbonesModern sardines are canned with the bones in and they are soft enough to mash without removing. Lift them out only if you dislike the texture.
- Soft stale bread crumbsCrumbs torn from the interior of a day-old loaf, not dry packaged crumbs, which absorb far more liquid and will turn the mixture pasty. About 1/4 cup, loosely packed.
- CreamUnqualified 'cream' in period American cookbooks of this kind is generally the lighter sort, so light cream or half-and-half is the safe reading. Heavy cream gives a much richer, thicker result and can be thinned with a little milk.
- ButterA quarter cup of butter with only a quarter cup of crumbs is a great deal of fat by current taste; 2 tablespoons is ample and the dish still holds together.
- YieldEnough for four slices of toast as a light supper or savoury course. Assemble on the toast at the last moment or the bread goes soft.
Fannie Farmer's chafing-dish chapter records a specific late-Victorian and Edwardian fashion: the table-top spirit lamp, which let a hostess cook a hot dish in the parlour or a student make supper in a room with no kitchen. The recipes lean on shelf-stable goods, and canned sardines were among the most reliable of them, imported in quantity from Norway and France and, by the 1880s, packed in Maine as well. Dishes of this kind, served on toast in small portions, sat in the English-influenced category of the "savoury" and were a standard way to make an inexpensive tinned fish look like company food.