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Sardines in Papers
Drain the oil from some sardines, then scrape and bone them; fill them with a mixture of chopped mushrooms, fine herbs, and cold brown sauce. Wrap them carefully in paper, fastening it securely at the ends, and warm them in the oven. Place the sardines on a hot dish and serve.
Sardines, Maitre d'Hotel Skin a number of sardines, cut off their tails, arrange them on hot buttered toast on a dish, and heat them in the oven. Put one teacupful of white sauce in a saucepan, mix with it one tablespoonful of finely chopped onion and a small quantity of chopped parsley, boil it for a few minutes, then add one tablespoonful of chili vinegar and one pinch of cayenne pepper. Remove the dish of sardines from the oven, pour the sauce over them, and serve without delay.
Sardines, Piedmontese Scrape some sardines and place them in the oven to heat. Put in a saucepan four well beaten yolks of eggs, one teaspoonful each of tarragon vinegar, malt vinegar and made mustard, a small quantity of salt, and one-half tablespoonful of butter. Stir the sauce over the fire until it is quite thick, but do not allow it to boil. Cut some slices of bread, remove the crusts, and fry them in boiling lard or butter until lightly browned. Drain the pieces of bread, arrange them on a hot dish, pile the sardines on them, pour the sauce over and serve.
Three short savouries built on tinned sardines, written for a kitchen that kept brown sauce, white sauce and flavoured vinegars on hand at all times. The work is in the sauces; the fish only needs warming through.
- The hinge: heat, don't cookTinned sardines are already fully cooked. All three preparations ask only that they be warmed through; the recipe gives no oven setting, and a few minutes in a moderate oven is the sense of it. Left longer they dry out and break up.
- The papersUse baking parchment, cut into rounds or hearts and folded and crimped at the edges, as for en papillote. Do not use waxed paper, which melts. Butter the paper lightly so the fish releases.
- Brown sauceThis means espagnole or a reduced demi-glace — a brown roux sauce built on veal or beef stock, a standard of large professional kitchens of the period. A few spoonfuls of a well-reduced beef stock thickened with a brown roux will do; a jarred demi-glace concentrate is the shortcut.
- Fine herbsFines herbes: chopped parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives in roughly equal parts. Parsley and chives alone are an acceptable reduction.
- TeacupfulUsually reckoned at about six fluid ounces, three-quarters of a cup, though the measure was never standardised and is given anywhere from a gill to a half-pint. Nineteenth-century teacups ran smaller than modern mugs.
- Chili vinegarVinegar steeped with hot red peppers, commonly sold bottled in the period and now rare. Steep two or three dried chillies in a cup of cider or white wine vinegar for a week, or substitute a mild pepper sauce cut with vinegar.
- The Piedmontese sauceFour yolks, vinegar, mustard and butter stirred until thick and never boiled is a mustard sabayon, and it will scramble on direct heat in seconds. Work in a bowl over barely simmering water and pull it off at about 170F, when it coats the spoon.
- Frying the bread"Boiling lard" means fat at frying heat, roughly 350F, not literally boiling. The recipe allows butter as well; watch the croutes, as they colour quickly.
- YieldEach preparation is a savoury or first course. Reckon three or four sardines per person; the number of tins will depend on their size.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel whose name carried the Waldorf's dining rooms through the 1890s and beyond, published his Cook Book in 1896; he was the dining-room manager rather than a chef, and the book is largely a compilation of the standard French repertoire. Sardines have their place in it because the tinned fish trade — Breton and later Norwegian and Maine canneries — had by then made a delicate, oily little fish available year-round in any American city, and hotel kitchens seized on it for the savoury course and the supper menu, where something hot, salty and quickly assembled was wanted after the theatre. The three dishes here are a fair sample of how a French-trained kitchen dressed a cheap ingredient: en papillote from the classical repertoire, a maître d'hôtel treatment named for the office Oscar himself held, and a "Piedmontese" sauce whose connection to Piedmont is decorative rather than documented — the geographical epithet was a standard way of distinguishing one variation from another on a long menu.