Whelk Sandwich
Cooked whelks on bread with vinegar; seaside fare.
Coastal Fish & Shellfish
Smoked Mackerel and Horseradish
Smoked mackerel with horseradish cream; classic pairing.
Smoked Haddock Sandwich
A cold-smoked haddock fillet is smoked but still raw, so it must be poached before it ever meets the bread, flaked warm onto buttered slices: the pale undyed kind, not the dyed yellow.
Sardines on Toast
Tinned sardines on a single slice of hot buttered toast, the tin oil spooned over and let soak into the crumb instead of drained: an open-faced hot supper built on the oil.
Sardine Sandwich
Tinned sardines mashed coarsely with their oil and a squeeze of lemon, spread thick between two slices of buttered white bread and cut diagonally; a Sunday-tea cupboard sandwich.
Sardine and Tomato
Mashed tinned sardines with sliced fresh tomato or tinned tomato sauce, on buttered brown bread. The British store-cupboard sandwich with one fresh second element.
Prawn Sandwich
Small cold prawns loose on soft buttered brown bread, little else: the plain reading of the prawn sandwich, where the butter carries the load and the shellfish is left to taste of itself.
Prawn Salad Sandwich
Cold-water prawns sharing the bread with lettuce, cucumber and tomato, a sandwich carrying more wet things at once than anything else on the seafood shelf. The whole craft is drainage, leak by leak.
Prawn Mayo
Prawn mayonnaise sandwich: small cold-water prawns folded into mayonnaise on malted brown bread, the chilled triangle Marks and Spencer launched at Marble Arch in October 1980.
Prawn Cocktail Sandwich
Prawns with Marie Rose sauce (mayo, ketchup, Worcestershire, lemon); retro classic.
Prawn and Marie Rose
Small cold-water prawns folded through coral-pink Marie Rose sauce (mayonnaise, ketchup, Worcestershire, lemon) on buttered malted brown. The sauce-defined sibling of the prawn cocktail sandwich.
Prawn and Avocado
Cold-water prawns with sliced or roughly mashed avocado on malted brown bread, a chilled meal-deal wedge with a 1980s Marks and Spencer pedigree.
Poached Salmon Sandwich
Cold poached salmon with mayonnaise.
Pilchard Sandwich
Tinned pilchards (larger sardines) on bread.
Mackerel Sandwich
Smoked or tinned mackerel on bread; oily fish, strong flavor.
Lobster Sandwich
Fresh picked lobster on plain sliced bread with butter and a squeeze of lemon, the plainest possible carrier for an expensive catch. A coastal British reading, not the New England roll.
Lobster Roll (British)
Picked Cornish lobster on a small soft toasted brioche bun, dressed with mayonnaise and lemon and a few drops of warm butter; the chef-led British seaside reading of the New England original.
Kipper Sandwich
Smoked kipper (split herring) on bread; traditional breakfast fish.
Kedgeree Sandwich
Kedgeree, the Anglo-Indian breakfast of curried rice, smoked haddock and egg, reassembled flat inside bread: a finished Victorian sideboard dish, descended from khichri, persuaded to fold.
Jellied Eel Sandwich
The East End jellied eel sandwich: chopped eel set cold in its own savoury jelly on plain buttered bread, a Cockney pie-and-mash tradition off the Thames.
Gravlax Sandwich
Salt-and-sugar-and-dill-cured raw salmon, never smoked, sliced thin onto buttered Nordic rye with Swedish hovmästarsås mustard-dill sauce; the medieval Bothnian-coast cure named for the burial pit.
Dressed Crab Sandwich
Crab with both white and brown meat, dressed with mayonnaise.
Cromer Crab Sandwich
Cromer crab (small, sweet Norfolk crabs) on bread; famous crab destination.
Crayfish Sandwich
Crayfish tails in cocktail sauce; modern alternative to prawn.