This Vintage Sandwich Pairs Popcorn With An Unexpected Canned Food

Exploring vintage recipes can often be a chance to rediscover an amazing, once-popular dish that somehow got lost in time. Yet sometimes, reading an old-school recipe can leave you scratching your head, wondering how on earth it ever made sense. Such is the case with a sandwich recipe from 1909 that can be found in "The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book: 400 Ways to Make a Sandwich" by Eva Greene Fuller. The recipe includes two chopped-up cups of popcorn as one of its ingredients. But that isn't even the weirdest part. The "popcorn sandwich" also calls for an unexpected canned food: five boned sardines.

This isn't a traditional sandwich that is made on two pieces of bread stacked on top of each other with a filling in between. It's more of an open-faced sandwich that features a paste-like spread added to "circles of hot buttered toast." To make this vintage sandwich no one remembers anymore, you're instructed to grind two cups of fresh popcorn in a meat chopper (use a food processor for a modernized version), and then add salt, cayenne pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup. Place five canned sardines into the mix and then combine the ingredients until they "form a paste." You'll then spread that paste onto your buttered toast and sprinkle it with grated Parmesan cheese. Place both pieces of toast in a toaster oven or air fryer and crisp them up until the cheese melts. Then...eat it? 

Popular TikToker Barry Enderwick, who runs the account @sandwichesofhistory, tried this old-school sandwich and gave it a less-than-enthusiastic review, going so far as to say "it's not even a sandwich!" So if you feel like trying this, prepare yourself for potential disappointment.

Because Fuller's book contains 400 different sandwich recipes and only one includes popcorn as an ingredient, it's hard to imagine that popcorn sandwiches were really that popular or commonplace. It seems more likely that Fuller simply included some fun or novelty sandwich recipes to reach the required number of 400. This old-fashioned popcorn snack is included in the book's "miscellaneous"  section, which also includes two different baked bean sandwich recipes. One, called the "Boston Baked Bean" sandwich, is made from smashing cold baked beans through a colander and adding chopped celery, horseradish, and ketchup, then spreading it on buttered brown bread. Another, titled the "Mexican" sandwich, is simply made from salted crackers spread with baked beans and ketchup.

To make a more modern version of the popcorn sandwich, you could substitute popcorn for chips. Or, rather than making a popcorn-ketchup-anchovy paste, put a handful of popcorn in your favorite sandwich. In the same way you would use savory potato chip flavors to elevate your everyday sandwiches, try experimenting with different bagged popcorn flavors. White cheddar popcorn could make a salty, crunchy addition to a ham and cheese sandwich, while Trader Joe's Buffalo Ranch popcorn gives extra oomph to a club sandwich. Craving a spicy tuna melt? Crush up some Smartfood Flamin' Hot Cheetos popcorn and sprinkle it into your tuna before adding it to the bread.