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Caviare-Lobster Sandwich
Spread thinly buttered white bread with caviare, season with lemon juice, and on top of this lay a little minced lobster. Cover with another slice of buttered bread and place on a lettuce leaf.
A two-luxury sandwich from the era when both caviare and canned lobster were fixtures of the American tea table. The whole thing hinges on restraint: caviare is salty enough to carry the sandwich alone, so the lobster and butter are there for texture and richness, not for seasoning.
- Caviare quantityFigure a scant teaspoon per slice, spread in a thin film rather than a layer. Modern salted roe — trout, salmon, paddlefish, hackleback — is often more heavily salted than a good sturgeon caviare, and the sandwich can turn brackish quickly.
- Never press the roeSpread the butter first and let the eggs sit on top of it; work them as little as possible so the grains stay whole. Pressing the top slice down hard is what makes this sandwich weep grey liquid.
- "Minced lobster"Cooked tail and claw meat chopped fine, not pounded to paste. Canned lobster was widely available when books like this were written and may well be what was intended; today use picked meat from a cooked lobster or good frozen claw meat, drained well and patted dry.
- Lemon juiceA few drops only, and squeezed over the roe rather than mixed into it. Acid firms the eggs and dulls their colour if it stands, so assemble and serve within the hour.
- The breadFine-crumbed white bread, sliced thin and crusts trimmed, was standard for tea sandwiches. Butter must be genuinely soft so it spreads without tearing the crumb — spreading cold butter on thin bread is the usual failure here.
- Butter as a barrierThe butter is structural: it seals the crumb against the moisture in both roe and lobster. Take it to the edges on both slices.
- Lettuce leafIt is a serving base, not a filling — a crisp lettuce leaf set on the plate under the sandwich. Do not put it inside.
- Yield and serviceCut each sandwich into two triangles or three fingers; a slice's worth serves one person as part of a tea or supper spread. Serve cold, and do not make these ahead.
Sandwich books proliferated in America between about 1890 and 1920, when afternoon tea, card parties and "chafing dish" suppers created demand for dozens of small filled breads and cookbook publishers were happy to supply lists of them. Caviare reached these menus in quantity because North American sturgeon — from the Delaware, the Hudson and the Great Lakes — were being fished hard through the late nineteenth century, and domestic roe was cheap enough to appear in ordinary recipe collections rather than only in restaurant kitchens. Lobster arrived from the other direction: canning had turned it from a coastal commonplace into a shelf-stable pantry item shipped inland, and canned lobster shows up constantly in salads, croquettes and sandwich fillings of the period. A sandwich pairing the two would read as luxurious today. The sturgeon fishery collapsed within a generation, which is why the same page now describes an expensive dish.