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Sardine Sandwich No. 4
Remove skin and bones from the sardines and pound to a paste; season with salt and cayenne pepper and a dash of lemon juice. Spread on thin slices of lightly buttered white or rye bread; cover with another slice of bread and garnish with a pickle.
A straightforward potted-sardine filling that needs almost nothing translated, though the fish itself is not quite what it was in 1909.
- The sardinesA standard 3.75 oz tin, drained, makes enough paste for three or four sandwiches. Sardines packed in olive oil pound smoother than those in water; if using water-packed, work in a teaspoon of oil or softened butter to bring the paste together.
- Skin and bonesModern brislings and small pilchards are canned with the tiny backbone left in, and it is soft enough to mash invisibly. Removing it, as the original directs, gives a finer paste, but it is optional rather than necessary. Larger sardines may have a tougher spine worth pulling out.
- PoundingA mortar or the back of a fork is what the original assumes. A food processor will do it in seconds but tends to whip the oil into something pasty and dull; short pulses, or a fork, keep more texture.
- CayenneA dash means a light pinch. Sardines are already assertive and salty from the tin, so taste before adding the salt the recipe calls for; many brands will need little or none.
- The breadThin slices, lightly buttered, are structural as much as stylistic: the butter seals the crumb against the oil in the fish so the sandwich does not go soggy before it is eaten. Cut the crusts if serving as tea sandwiches.
- The pickleA garnish pickle here most likely means a small gherkin or dill cucumber laid alongside on the plate rather than a slice inside the sandwich, though the recipe does not specify. Its acidity works against the oily fish, as does the lemon juice.
- Making aheadThe paste keeps two or three days covered in the refrigerator, and an hour's rest gives the lemon and pepper time to settle in. Spread it on bread only when serving.
Sandwich books proliferated in America in the first decade of the twentieth century, when the sandwich is often said to have moved from a man's tavern snack to the centerpiece of the ladies' luncheon and the afternoon tea table -- hence the thin bread, the light butter and the numbered variations, of which this is the fourth sardine treatment in the section. Tinned sardines were the enabling ingredient: cheap, shelf-stable, imported in quantity from France, Portugal and Norway, and canned in Maine from the 1870s at Eastport, they gave a cook fish flavor in a pantry with no refrigeration. Pounding preserved fish to a paste with cayenne and lemon is older still, descending from the English potted-fish tradition.