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Halibut Sandwich
Cold halibut shredded, mixed with a little mayonnaise dressing and capers. Spread between lightly buttered white bread. Garnish with a radish.
A leftover recipe in the strict sense: it assumes a piece of poached or baked halibut left from dinner. Everything hinges on the fish being properly cold and firm before you touch it.
- Start with cooked fish"Cold halibut" means halibut already poached, baked or steamed, then chilled through. Warm fish will shed moisture into the mayonnaise and soak the bread within minutes.
- Shredded, not flaked to mushPull the cooked flesh apart along the grain into coarse threads and check for the heavy centre bone and any pin bones. Halibut is lean and firm enough to hold its shape if you stop working it early.
- ProportionsThe original gives none. About a cup of shredded fish to two tablespoons mayonnaise and a tablespoon of drained, roughly chopped capers dresses four sandwiches; the mixture should look barely bound, not creamy.
- Mayonnaise dressingAt the time this meant a made-to-order egg-and-oil mayonnaise, thinner and sharper than the jarred kind. Loosen commercial mayonnaise with a squeeze of lemon to get closer to the intended texture.
- CapersDrain and blot them, and taste before salting the mixture. Salt-packed capers in particular will carry enough salt for the whole filling.
- Lightly buttered breadThe butter is structural, not a flavour. A thin film on both slices, spread edge to edge, keeps the dressing from wetting the crumb, which matters if the sandwiches are made ahead.
- The radishThe instruction is simply "Garnish with a radish", which suggests it sat on the plate rather than inside the bread. A radish cut into a fan or rose would suit; a few thin slices tucked into the sandwich work just as well and add the bite the filling wants.
- KeepingCooked fish in dressing should be eaten the day it is made and kept refrigerated until serving. Assemble no more than an hour or two ahead.
Halibut was one of the great commercial fish of the North Atlantic and North Pacific in the early twentieth century, firm enough to appear regularly on American hotel and boarding-house menus, often boiled or baked in a large piece. That routine left cooks with cold leftovers, and fish sandwiches of this kind commonly begin with something already cooked. The capers and mayonnaise recall the sauces served alongside boiled fish, here redeployed as a binder. Sandwich collections like this one belong to the era of the ladies' luncheon and the afternoon tea, when small sandwiches on white bread with a cut radish or a sprig of parsley were a common form.