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Cream Russian Caviare Sandwiches
Cream Russian caviare, with pepper and lemon juice and spread it between two thin strips of bread. White, brown or rye bread may be used.
Two lines of instruction that assume a cook already knows how a sandwich works. What needs translating is the verb, the caviare itself, and the fact that nothing here is cooked.
- "Cream" is the instructionPeriod usage of the verb generally means working something to a smooth, spreadable consistency, so here: work the caviare smooth with a fork or the back of a spoon so it spreads without tearing thin bread. It most likely does not mean adding cream, though the recipe does not say. Some cooks blend in a little softened butter or cream cheese; that is not in the original. Work gently: crushing every egg turns the filling to grey paste.
- Which caviare to buy"Russian caviare" meant salted sturgeon roe from the Caspian. Wild Caspian beluga is protected under CITES and its import into the United States is prohibited; buy farmed sturgeon caviar, or use trout, salmon or whitefish roe, which are cheaper and hold up better in a sandwich.
- QuantitiesNone are given. About 2 oz of roe, 2 tablespoons of softened butter or cream cheese, and the juice of half a lemon fill roughly a dozen small sandwiches.
- Salt and pepperCaviare is already heavily salted, so add none. The "pepper" is best as a few grinds of white pepper, which does not speck the pale filling.
- The bread"Thin strips" is not explained. It may mean narrow fingers of bread, or crustless slices cut as thin as the loaf allows and then cut into fingers after filling. A day-old close-crumbed loaf slices thinner than fresh. Buttering the bread as well as the filling helps keep moisture from soaking through, though the recipe itself calls for no butter.
- Serve the day you make themThis is an uncooked, unheated filling. Keep it refrigerated, assemble close to serving, and do not hold the finished sandwiches more than a few hours, especially in a warm room.
- Lemon juice, added lateLemon juice -- The recipe creams it in with the caviare. If you prefer, stir it in just before spreading; acid standing on the roe is often said to dull its colour.
Caviare arrived in the American cookbook as a marker of Russian and, more broadly, continental sophistication: Caspian sturgeon roe reached New York and the resort hotels in tins by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and turn-of-the-century menus used it to signal an expensive first course. Its appearance in a sandwich chapter says a good deal about the period. The 1890s and 1900s were the height of the fashionable afternoon tea and the card-party "reception" sandwich, where the point was a great many very small, very thin, crustless things, each with a single strong flavour. Books of the era give whole pages of them: anchovy, watercress, chopped nuts, ham paste. The offer of white, brown or rye bread is a nod to the Northern European way of eating roe on dark bread. American sturgeon fisheries, which had been abundant enough in the nineteenth century that the roe was often treated as a cheap byproduct, were collapsing from overfishing at roughly the time this book was printed.