Allow 3 sardines for each person; bone and fillet these, carefully removing all the skin, and set them aside until required. Boil 2 eggs for 3 minutes; shell them and break them up in your salad bowl with a spoon; mix with them a teaspoonful each French mustard and essence of anchovies, the strained oil from the tin of sardines with as much Lucca oil as will make 3 tablespoonfuls in all; add Chile, shallot, and good malt vinegar to taste (vinegar varies so much in acidity that it is difficult to specify the exact proportion). Cut up some nice crisp lettuce, and mix it well with the dress ing, but only just before it is to be served. Put a little heap of mustard and cress in the center of the salad, with a whole red capsicum upon it. Arrange the sardines round, and outside these a border of mustard and cress, dotted here and there with thin slices of red capsicums.