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Popcorn Sandwich
Pass two cupfuls of freshly popped corn through the meat chopper, place this in the chopping bowl, add a dash of salt and cayenne pepper, five boned sardines, a dash of Worcestershire, and enough tomato catsup to form a paste. Spread this on circles of hot buttered toast. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and crisp in hot oven. Serve as soon as made.
A savoury canapé disguised as a sandwich, and one that lives or dies on timing: the ground popcorn begins absorbing moisture from the catsup the moment it is mixed, so everything should be assembled and put in the oven at once.
- Hot oven"hot oven" in period usage corresponds to roughly 400-450F; the recipe itself gives no temperature or time. The toast rounds need only a few minutes to set the cheese and crisp the surface; any longer and the bread dries out under the paste.
- The meat chopperA hand-cranked grinder reduced popcorn to coarse crumbs. A food processor does the same in short pulses, but stop while the texture is still gritty rather than powdery. Two cupfuls of popped corn yields only about a third of a cup of crumb.
- Chopping bowlThe wooden bowl and curved knife were simply the mixing and mincing station of the period. A bowl and fork, or a few more pulses in the processor, replace them.
- Sardines"Five boned sardines" means five whole tinned fish, lifted from the oil and the spine pulled out. A standard small tin holds roughly three to five fish, so one tin should cover it. Drain them well or the paste will not hold.
- Tomato catsupCatsup of the period was generally thinner and sharper than most modern ketchup, which tends to be sweeter, so add it a teaspoon at a time and stop as soon as the mixture coheres, then adjust with the Worcestershire.
- Toast circlesCut rounds with a 2-inch cutter from thin white bread, toast, then butter while hot. Cutting after toasting gives cleaner edges than toasting pre-cut rounds.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; the quantity will cover perhaps a dozen small rounds. The instruction to serve as soon as made is not politeness; cold, these go leathery.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) belongs to a brief American vogue for the sandwich as an all-purpose vehicle, and it is where the experiments landed. Popcorn had been a cheap parlour and street food since roughly the 1880s, when portable poppers are generally said to have spread it through fairs and theatres; grinding it into a binder for tinned fish is exactly the sort of thrift-plus-novelty move that period cookbooks favoured, using a bulk ingredient to stretch a small quantity of something expensive. The pairing of sardines, Worcestershire and grated Parmesan on hot toast is a straightforward descendant of the English savoury, the small hot dish served at the end of a meal, which American hostesses of the era were busy relocating to the beginning as a canapé.