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Caviare Sandwiches
These are preferable in the form of "open" sandwiches (no top piece of bread). The caviare, on being taken from the tin, is seasoned with lemon juice, spread on the bread.
Barely a recipe at all, but the proportions and handling matter more than the brevity suggests. Caviare is a seasoning as much as a filling, and the open-faced format exists so the bread does not overwhelm it.
- What "caviare" meant hereIn a book of this date it will mean salted sturgeon roe sold in a sealed tin, generally saltier and firmer than most caviar sold today; pressed caviare was one common tinned form, but granular salted roe was tinned as well. A modern equivalent is any lightly salted roe in a small jar; if you use a mild farmed osetra or a hackleback, reduce the lemon juice accordingly or it will dominate.
- Sturgeon and substitutesWild sturgeon roe from most species is now restricted or banned in international trade, and the cheap domestic caviare this book assumed no longer exists. Farmed sturgeon caviar, American paddlefish or hackleback roe, or salmon roe all work in this format.
- AmountsNothing is specified. Reckon roughly a teaspoon of roe per small square of bread; a 2 oz jar will cover about a dozen pieces. Figure three or four per person as a first course.
- Lemon juiceAdd it drop by drop and stir gently. Too much acid softens and dulls the eggs, and metal spoons are traditionally avoided with roe because they can leave a faint metallic taste.
- The breadA firm, fine-crumbed white bread cut thin, crusts off, and cut into squares or rounds. Toast points also work. Coarse or sweet modern sandwich bread collapses under a wet topping and fights the salt.
- ButterThe recipe omits it, but a thin layer of unsalted butter on the bread keeps the base from going soggy and softens the salt. Spread it right to the edges.
- Temperature and timingKeep the roe refrigerated until the moment of assembly and serve within half an hour of spreading. Caviare left standing at room temperature loses texture quickly, and the bread draws moisture out of it.
Caviare appears in American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s more often than modern readers expect, because for several decades it was not a luxury import but a domestic product. Sturgeon from the Delaware, the Hudson and the Great Lakes were fished heavily through the late nineteenth century, and much of the roe was salted and shipped to Europe, some of it returning as "Russian" caviar. The stocks collapsed by the early twentieth century, which is one reason a casual tin of caviare for sandwiches reads so strangely now — though the recipe's own wording, "caviare" and "tin", points at least as much to British usage, so how directly that American story bears on this book is uncertain. The open-faced form recommended here at least resembles the Russian and Scandinavian service in which roe is set on buttered bread or blini rather than buried between two slices, and it belongs to the same turn-of-the-century fashion for small dressed savouries that fills the sandwich chapters of books like this one.