Roe Sandwich
Mix the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs with the roe of a salt herring. Place the mixture between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread. Garnish with a slice of lemon.
Three lines of nineteenth-century shorthand that assume you keep a barrel of salt herring and know what to do with it. The whole dish turns on which roe you buy and how much salt you leave in it.
- Which roeIn herring terminology the soft roe is the male milt and the hard roe is the female eggs; period sandwich and canapé recipes often mean the soft roe, which mashes into a smooth paste, though this one does not say which. Hard roe stays grainy and will give you a very different sandwich.
- Salt herring needs soakingTraditional barrel-salted herring and its roe are heavily cured and are meant to be freshened before eating. Soak in cold water or milk in the refrigerator, changing the liquid, then taste before you mix; the finished spread should not need any added salt.
- SourcingLoose salt-herring roe is rare in general supermarkets. Look in Northern and Eastern European delicatessens, or buy whole salt herring and take the roe from it. Tinned or jarred herring milt from a Baltic supplier is the practical substitute.
- Raw-cured fishSalting is a cure, not cooking. Buy from a commercial supplier whose product is intended to be eaten as sold; the reputable ones freeze the fish to deal with parasites before curing. Do not improvise the cure at home from fresh herring.
- ProportionsThree hard yolks to the roe of one herring is roughly two parts yolk to one part roe, and the yolks are there to soften the salt. Push the yolks through a sieve and mash the roe with a fork before combining, or the mixture stays lumpy.
- Working it into a spreadThe paste as written is dry. A teaspoon of the butter, or a little lemon juice or cream, brings it to spreading consistency without adding salt.
- YieldOne herring roe and three yolks make roughly a third of a cup of filling, enough for three or four rounds of sandwiches cut small. This is a savoury for a tea tray, not lunch.
- The lemonNot decoration only. The acid cuts the salt and the fattiness of the milt; squeeze it over the filling as well as laying a slice alongside.
The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book belongs to the brief American vogue, roughly the 1890s through the 1910s, for the sandwich as a small formal food, served at teas, card parties and receptions rather than eaten out of hand. Salt herring itself was the opposite of fashionable: barrel-cured herring was one of the cheapest preserved proteins in the North Atlantic world, a staple of Scandinavian, German, Dutch and Ashkenazi Jewish kitchens, and the soft roe was a by-product that came with the fish. Herring paired with hard-boiled egg is well attested across those cuisines, where the mild fat of the yolk is used to blunt a fierce cure, though the mashing of roe with yolk specifically is harder to document. Its arrival on thin buttered white bread with a lemon slice shows the compilers doing what the genre did constantly, taking a peasant preserve and giving it the manners of the drawing room.