Cassell's dictionary of cookery

Sardine Salad (a German dish).— Take any cold dressed fish. Free it from skin and bone, and tear it into flakes. Put a layer of it in the centre of a dish, and sprinkle lightly over it a small portion of minced gherkins and bruised capers. Place on this a layer of sliced German sausage, and arrange on the top of the pile sardines split into halves and freed from bone and skin. Cut lettuce-hearts into quarters, place these round the salad, and garnish the dish with hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters lengthwise. At the moment of serving, pour over the salad a sauce prepared as follows : — Take the flesh of three sardines freed from skin and gristle. Rub this in a mortar to a smooth paste with the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs ; and add a pinch of cayenne, a grate of nutmeg, and two tablespoonfuls each of oil, vinegar, and light wine. Add the ingredients slowly, and beat the sauce well between every addition. Sardine Sandwiches.— Take as many tinned sardines as will be wanted. Scrape the skin lightly off each fish, split it open, cut off the tail, and remove any bones there may be. Take thin slices of bread from a stale loaf, butter these, and lay the sardines between two of them. Cut away the crust, and press the slices with the hand to make them adhere. Cut them with a sharp knife into long narrow sandwiches, and serve on a dish covered ■with a neatly-folded napkin. Garnish with parsley. Sardine Sauce. — Take eight sardines, and remove the bones. Make a butter sauce ready, with water or broth, of the ordinary thickness. In this boil the bones of the fish, a bay-leaf, and a finely-minced shallot, adding some pepper, nutmeg, or mace, and a little lemon-juice. When the sauce is properly flavoured, strain it, and add to it the fish chopped small. SAR (827) SAU Sardines. — The best are the small sardines caught on the coast of Provence in I'rance. From a thousand to twelve hundred fishing smacks arc engaged in catching these fish off the coast of Brittany from June to the middle of October of each year. The French often cure sardines in red brine, and when thus prepared designate them anchoisees or a'ncJiovicd sardines. These are packed in vessels previously used for holding wine, and exported to the Levant. When quite fresh sardines are considered excellent : they entirely lose their flavour, and become quite insipid if kept for any length of time. On the ^Mediterranean coasts of Italy and France sardine fishing takes place in the summer months. The fish are cured by washing in salt water, sprinkling with salt, removing the head, gills, &c., washing again, drying in the sun and wind, steeping in boiling olive oil, draining, and packing in small square tin boxes ; the boxes are filled up with oil, the lid is soldered on, and the box is exposed for a short time to the action of steam or hot water. These cured sardines are largely exported to various countries, where they are considered a delicacy. The real sardine resembles a small pilchard ; but many of the fish cured as sardines are not genuine : they are either sprats, pUchards, or small herrings.