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Boiled Sardines on Toast
Arrange twelve good-sized boneless sardines on a double broiler and broil on a brisk fire for two minutes on each side. Remove, dress on six freshly prepared toasts, spread a tablespoon melted butter evenly over them, decorate with six pieces lemon and a little parsley greens and serve.
A two-minute savoury from the era when tinned sardines were a staple of the larder. The title says boiled; the method is grilling, and the method is what to follow.
- "Boiled" is a misprint or a loose usageNothing here is boiled. The fish are broiled — grilled over or under direct heat — and the instructions are internally consistent on that point.
- A double broilerNot a double boiler. This is a hinged wire grill basket that clamps the food between two grids so delicate fish can be turned in one motion without breaking. A fish basket, or a preheated sheet under the broiler with a wide offset spatula, does the same work.
- A brisk fireHigh, direct heat — the equivalent of a broiler element preheated for five minutes with the rack close to it, or a very hot grill. Sardines are thin and oily and want to colour fast rather than dry out slowly.
- Which sardines"Boneless sardines" in this period most often meant tinned fillets packed in oil, though the recipe does not say so and fresh fish cannot be ruled out. If tinned, drain them well before they go near the heat. If you use fresh sardines instead, they need gutting and scaling and rather more than two minutes a side.
- TimingTwo minutes a side suits fresh fish. If yours are tinned they are already cooked and want only heating and a little browning — closer to a minute a side, watched, before they collapse.
- The toast"Freshly prepared toasts" means toast made at the last moment and cut to fit. Soggy toast is the usual failure of this dish; assemble and serve immediately.
- YieldSix pieces of toast, two sardines each — six small savoury or first-course portions, or three as a light lunch.
Sardines on toast belongs to the savoury, the small hot salt course that closed a formal English dinner and lingered in American hotel cookery well into the twentieth century. Its existence depends entirely on the tin: commercial sardine canning in oil is generally traced to Brittany in the early nineteenth century, and Maine sardine packing — herring under the sardine name — began in the mid-1870s at Eastport, reaching large volume in the following decade, which put a cheap, shelf-stable, faintly luxurious fish within easy reach. A cook could produce this in the time it took to make toast. The lemon and parsley are not decoration in the idle sense; the acid and the green are the whole counterweight to a mouthful of oily fish on buttered bread.