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Broiled Sardine Sandwich
Use sardines in oil, remove from can and put on a platter to drain off oil. Toast thin slices of bread and cut in triangles or squares, and butter while hot. Dip each sardine in cracker crumbs, put on a broiler and broil over a coal fire first on one side, then the other. Lay two broiled sardines on a piece of toast, cover with another slice, and garnish with a slice of lemon. Serve as soon as made.
A late-Victorian chafing-dish trifle that survives translation almost intact: the only real change is the heat source. Canned sardines arrive fully cooked, so broiling is about crisping the crumb and warming the fish through, not cooking it.
- "Broil over a coal fire"A coal or gas grill grate with fierce direct heat from below. A modern oven broiler set high, with the pan about four inches from the element, does the same job; a ridged stovetop pan also works. Roughly one to two minutes a side, until the crumbs colour.
- Do not overcookThe fish is already cooked in the can. Left under heat much past two minutes a side, the flesh dries and the fillets break apart when you lift them. Pull them the moment the crumbs turn gold.
- Draining and crumbingAfter the platter drain, blot the fillets with paper towel. Too much clinging oil and the crumbs slide off; too dry and nothing adheres. A very light film is what you want.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker crumbs generally meant crushed soda or water crackers, coarser in texture than modern fine dried breadcrumbs. Crushed saltines or unsalted water biscuits give the closest texture; panko is airier and colours faster.
- The tinChoose sardines in olive oil packed as whole fillets rather than the small skinless-boneless kind, which fall apart on the grate. A standard 3.75 oz tin usually holds somewhere between three and six fillets, so roughly two or three sandwiches at the recipe's two fillets each.
- Handling on the grateLay the fillets on a piece of foil or a fine grill screen and turn with a thin fish slice. Straight onto open bars they stick and shred.
- SeasoningThe recipe adds nothing but lemon, and canned sardines are salty enough. A grind of pepper and a little of the lemon squeezed over before the top slice goes on is within the spirit of it.
- Yield and timingOne tin makes two or three small closed sandwiches, cut as triangles or squares as the recipe allows. "Serve as soon as made" is the operative instruction: the toast softens and the crumb coating goes limp within a few minutes.
Sandwich collections proliferated in America in the first decade of the twentieth century, aimed at the luncheon, the card party and the chafing dish, and fish sandwiches built on tinned goods were a staple of the genre because the pantry could produce them at short notice. Sardine canning in oil was industrialised in France in the early nineteenth century, at Nantes and along the Brittany coast, and by 1900 imported French tins and domestic Maine-packed herring were both common on American grocery shelves; the fish is generally said to take its name from Sardinia, where the shoals were once abundant. Crumbing and grilling a preserved fish was a standard way of giving tinned food the appearance and crackle of something freshly cooked, and the lemon garnish here does the same work that vinegar or lemon has always done against oily fish.