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Sardines with Tomato Catsup
Cook sardines in pan slightly. Heat catsup and pour over them. Serve on crackers.
Barely a recipe, more a serving formula from the era when a tin of sardines and a bottle of catsup were pantry staples. The whole thing takes about five minutes; the only real decisions are heat and quantity.
- "Cook slightly" means warm throughSardines are already cooked in the can. Lay them in a dry or lightly oiled pan over medium heat for a minute or two a side, just until hot and the edges firm. Longer and they break apart into paste.
- Drain them firstSardines packed in oil will spit and leave the crackers greasy. Lift them out and blot on paper towel before they go in the pan. Water-packed fish can go straight in.
- Catsup of 1910 was not ketchup of todayPeriod catsup was not ketchup of today -- Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century tomato catsup was generally thinner, sharper with vinegar and spice, and less sweet than the modern bottled product. If you use supermarket ketchup, cut it with a spoonful of vinegar or a dash of Worcestershire so the dish does not read as candy.
- Heat the catsup separatelyA small saucepan or a few seconds in the microwave is enough. Pouring cold sauce over hot fish on a cracker leaves everything lukewarm, which is the failure mode of this dish.
- CrackersA plain unsweetened soda or water cracker is the likeliest intention. Assemble at the last moment; sardine oil and warm catsup will soften a cracker within a couple of minutes.
- Bones and skinThe fine backbone in a sardine is edible and a useful source of calcium, but if the texture bothers you, split each fish and lift the spine out before warming.
- YieldA standard tin typically holds roughly four to six fish, enough for perhaps six to eight crackers: two people as a savoury, or four as a bite with drinks.
Sardines with catsup belongs to the Anglo-American "savoury" tradition, the small hot salty mouthful served at the end of dinner or handed round with drinks, and to the closely related world of the chafing dish, which let a hostess produce something warm without the kitchen. Canned sardines had been widely available since the middle of the nineteenth century, first from Brittany and later from Maine and California, and they were cheap, keepable and respectable. Bottled tomato catsup followed the same industrial path, moving from a homemade preserve into a commercially bottled product. Including a dish like this at all says something about the period's definition of thrift: the aim was not merely to avoid waste but to make an emergency dish appear on the table looking deliberate, and a tin plus a bottle plus a cracker did exactly that.