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Sardine Club Sandwiches
Skin, split and remove bones from twelve medium-sized sardines in oil, spread a very little French mustard over, and proceed to finish exactly as chicken club.
A cross-reference recipe: it assumes you already have the chicken club sandwich in hand, and only tells you what to swap in. Everything hinges on treating the sardines gently and keeping their oil off the toast.
- What a club sandwich means hereA club is generally toast, mayonnaise, crisp lettuce, tomato and bacon, cut into triangles. Both two-slice and three-decker versions are recorded; either works with sardines.
- French mustardNot the bright yellow American condiment. Read it as a smooth Dijon, used sparingly — the instruction says "a very little" because sardines are already assertive.
- Boning tinned sardinesMany tins sold now are skinless and boneless, and in others the bones are soft enough to eat. If yours still have the spine, lift it out with the tip of a knife after splitting the fish along the belly; it comes away in one piece.
- Drain them wellSardines packed in oil will soak a slice of toast to mush within minutes. Lay the split fillets on paper towel for a few minutes before they go near the bread, and butter the toast to seal it.
- Bacon and sardine togetherIf the chicken club it refers to includes bacon, this recipe does nothing to remove it, and that is a lot of salt and a lot of oil at once; some cooks drop the bacon or cut it back to a single rasher per sandwich.
- YieldTwelve sardines make four sandwiches at three fish apiece, or two generous three-decker clubs.
The club sandwich emerged in American clubhouses and hotel dining rooms in the last years of the nineteenth century — the name is generally traced to those private clubs rather than to any one inventor. By the time of this book it was fixed enough that a cookbook could name it as a technique rather than a dish. That is exactly how it functions here: the author writes "proceed to finish exactly as chicken club" and expects the reader to know. The sardine substitution reflects how thoroughly the tinned sardine had settled into the well-stocked larder by then; French and Portuguese canneries had been shipping them for decades. Swapping it for the roast chicken turns a sandwich that requires yesterday's dinner into one that requires only a can opener.