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Grilled Sardines
12 large sardines 1 tablespoon lemon-juice 6 pieces toast
Drain sardines and heat thoroughly in the grill. Turn frequently; add lemon-juice and serve on finger-length pieces of toast.
A savoury or light supper dish built on tinned fish, and about as short as recipes get. The whole job is warming the sardines through without breaking them.
- The table grillThe "grill" -- the appliance intended is probably the electric table grill, a small plug-in appliance with a flat hot plate that sat on the dining table, though "grill" could also mean a broiler. A heavy skillet over medium heat, or a stovetop grill pan, does the same work.
- The sardines are already cookedTinned sardines are cooked and preserved in the can. This is reheating, not cooking, and two to three minutes total is plenty. Longer and they dry out and fall apart.
- "12 large sardines"You will need several tins of sardines in oil to get a dozen fish; count varies by packer. Choose the largest fish you can find, as very small ones will not survive turning.
- DrainingDrain them well and blot on paper towel. Oil carried onto a hot plate will smoke and spit, and wet fish will steam rather than take colour.
- Turn frequently, but gentlyUse two thin spatulas or a fish slice. Sardines soften as they warm and a fork will shred them.
- Lemon at the endThe lemon juice goes on off the heat or in the last seconds; added early on a hot plate most of its freshness cooks away.
- Finger toastCut trimmed toast into strips about three inches by one, two fish to each. The recipe names no seasoning; pepper, or a little cayenne, suits the dish.
- YieldSix pieces of toast, so six as a savoury or canapé, or three as a light lunch.
Sardines on toast belongs to the English-derived savoury course, the small hot salty dish served after dessert or as a late supper, and it survived into American cookery as a quick chafing-dish and table-grill standby. Tinned sardines were among the earliest successful canned foods, produced in quantity in Brittany from the first half of the nineteenth century and later in Portugal, Spain and Maine, and by the time this Butterick collection appeared they were a cheap, reliably good pantry item. The table grill itself dates the page: electrical appliances for cooking at the table were a fashionable novelty in the 1910s and 1920s, often said to have been sold on the promise that a hostess could produce hot food without leaving her guests, and recipe books of the period are generally described as adding short chapters of dishes suited to a single small hot surface.