Travel Accounts, Fish, and Street Venders in Nineteenth Century Rio

Coarse sea salted marinated and pan fried sardines, sardine recipes below

The Parisian Adèle Toussaint-Samson (1826-1886) traveled to Brazil in the early 1850s where she would live with her husband and children for twelve years. Toussaint-Samson had a wealthy uncle who lived in Rio. Adèle Toussaint-Samson serves as keen observer of Brazilian foodways including seafood and African slavery; Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888. She provides a wonderful description of a fish market in Rio “where abound sardines, shrimps, oysters, and delicious fishes, which are bought alive.” She goes on to describe a female Afro-Brazilian street vender near the market selling “smoking batatas doces [sweet potato dish], fried sardines, and some angú” (manioc flour gravy) under a large linen umbrella. Here are two Brazilian sardine recipes appropriate for this memory of fish in nineteenth Rio.

Brazilian fried sardine recipe: http://www.all-fish-seafood-recipes.com/index.cfm/recipe/Sardinas_Fritas

Marinated pan fried sardine recipe: http://www.audreycooks.com/audreycooks/?p=394