No. 817

Sardines Marinated

Sardines Marinees

Range in layers in a big stone vessel about six pounds of large fresh sardines besprinkling each layer with salt, cover the sardines with a cloth and let macerate for two hours in a cold place; wipe them off one by one and return to the same washed vessel, then roll them in a little oil and place on a broiler; cook on a slow fire; they should be just singed, neither dry nor brown. Remove the fish and lay them one beside the other in the same vessel without tearing the skin; cover over with vinegar cooked with salt and aromatics but have it cold for use and strained: let macerate in this for one or two hours according to its strength. Take the sardines out again and lay them on a sieve; when well drained, range in layers either in a large crock or any other glazed vessel, having a cover to fit, alternating each layer by one of minced onions, bay leaves and peppercorns. These sardines can be kept in excellent condition for several weeks.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's marinated sardines are a preserving recipe, not a dish to be eaten the day it is made, and that is exactly where it fails by current standards. The notes below explain the terms and then the specific hazard.

The keeping instruction is the problemLightly singed fish, packed in layers in a covered crock with onion, bay and peppercorns and held "in excellent condition for several weeks," is a low-oxygen, low-acid environment; the recipe does not say how cold the storage is to be. That is a recognised setting for Clostridium botulinum, and marine fish are a recognised carrier of type E spores, which can grow at refrigerator temperatures.
The vinegar step does not acidify the fishA one- to two-hour steep in cooked, strained vinegar flavours the surface; it does not bring the interior of a whole sardine to the pH below 4.6 that would restrain botulinum. The original gives no vinegar strength, no ratio and no measured salt, so nothing here can be checked.
The fish is never brought to a safe temperature"Just singed, neither dry nor brown" is deliberately short of cooked. On the plate that is a choice; as the starting point for weeks of storage at an unstated temperature it removes the one step that would reduce the surface load.
Onions and bay in oilOnions and bay -- Alliums held under fat or oil with no oxygen have been implicated in botulism outbreaks. Here the onion is raw and no oil is added at packing, but the minced onion adds soil-borne material to an already low-oxygen pack rather than protecting against anything.
Salt without measureThe two-hour dry salting is "besprinkling each layer," which may be a heavy cure or a light seasoning. Preservation salt levels are a matter of percentages by weight; a recipe that will not state one cannot be assessed or reproduced.
If you want the dishFresh sardines grilled and dressed with vinegar and aromatics are worth eating, but use a current recipe with stated quantities that treats them as a same-day or few-days refrigerated preparation.
Terms, for readingThe "broiler" of 1894 is a gridiron set over coals, not an overhead element, and the "stone vessel" and "crock" are earthenware; the recipe itself calls for "any other glazed vessel." Six pounds of large fresh sardines is a substantial batch.

A Little History

This is No. 817 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Marinated sardines belong to the wide family of fried or grilled small fish steeped in vinegar and aromatics that runs from Spanish and Latin American escabeche to Italian in saor and French escabèche — a method generally traced to medieval Mediterranean practice for holding an oily, quick-spoiling catch for a few days without ice. Ranhofer's version sits in the cold side dishes, the part of the book that supplied a professional larder with items ready to be plated at short notice; the promise that they "can be kept in excellent condition for several weeks" comes from a kitchen with no notion of botulinum, which was only identified in Europe in the 1890s and not yet connected in American kitchens to preserved fish.