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Sardine Sandwiches
Drain the oil from five or six sardines, skin and bone them, and cut off their tails. Place them in a mortar with one anchovy that has been skinned and boned, add one ounce of butter and a small quantity each of salt, pepper, mace, and cayenne, and pound until smooth. Cut some rather thin slices of brown bread and butter, spread the mixture on them, and fold them over. Cut the sandwiches into finger lengths or quarters, arrange them on a dish over which has been spread a folded napkin or an ornamental dish-paper, garnish tastefully with sprigs of well washed parsley, and serve. Sausage Sandwiches, German Pare some slices of bread about an eighth of an inch thick. Cut some slices of German sausage and remove the skin. Butter the bread, cover a slice of bread and butter with the slices of sausage, turn another slice buttered side downwards over, and press them together. When all the sandwiches are made, pile evenly one on top of another as many as can easily be cut through, trim the edges evenly, cutting off the crusts, and then cut the sandwiches into pieces of a convenient size. Lay a napkin on a dish and pile the sandwiches nicely on it.
Two sandwich fillings from the Waldorf's cold larder, both built on the assumption that a kitchen has a marble mortar and a steady hand with a bread knife. Neither needs cooking; the work is all in the pounding and the trimming.
- The hinge: pound it truly smoothThe paste has to be homogeneous or the butter separates and the sandwich weeps. A small food processor does it in twenty seconds, but scrape down and pulse again -- any unbroken fragment of sardine skin will tear thin bread as you spread.
- Butter temperatureOne ounce is two tablespoons, and it must be genuinely soft, not melted. Melted butter will not emulsify with the fish and the mixture turns oily rather than creamy.
- SardinesFive or six oil-packed sardines is roughly one standard 3.75 oz tin. Skinless and boneless tins exist and save the tedious part; if you buy whole ones, the backbone lifts out in one piece with the tail.
- Mace and cayenneMace is the outer covering of nutmeg -- warmer and less sweet. A "small quantity" here means a pinch of each at most; a single anchovy plus the sardine oil already brings a great deal of salt, so taste before adding any more.
- Brown breadIn sandwich contexts of this period 'brown bread' most likely means a wholemeal or graham loaf rather than the steamed molasses Boston brown bread, since the slices must be cut thin and folded. A close-crumbed wholemeal sandwich loaf, sliced thin, will suit.
- "Fold them over"The slices are meant to be thin and fresh enough to bend without cracking. Day-old bread will split; if yours does, simply top with a second slice and press.
- German sausageA firm, fully cured, sliceable sausage -- cervelat, mettwurst or a coarse summer sausage. Not a fresh bratwurst, which would need cooking, and not a soft liver sausage, which would not slice at an eighth of an inch.
- Yield and servingOne tin of sardines fills four to six sandwiches, giving sixteen to twenty-four fingers -- a plate for six as a savoury or tea sandwich. The recipe's folded napkin or ornamental dish-paper is a presentation touch; a paper doily does the same job.
Oscar Tschirky's book catalogues the small cold food that a large hotel sold in quantity. Pounded fish paste of this kind descends from the English potted-fish tradition, where cooked fish was worked with butter and spice and sealed in a pot to keep -- here the keeping step is dropped and the paste goes straight onto bread. Tinned sardines, cheap and reliable by the 1890s after decades of French and later Maine canning, made the dish possible on a hotel scale, and the anchovy is there as a seasoning rather than an ingredient, doing the work salt alone could not. The German sausage sandwich beside it reflects the enormous German presence in New York's kitchens and delicatessens at the time, when "German sausage" on a menu needed no further explanation.