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Egg Sandwiches
Boil some eggs hard as if for a salad. When quite cold, cut them into thin slices, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and place the slices between nicely-prepared bread and butter. This is a convenient and delicate preparation for a journey taken in haste.
A four-line recipe with almost nothing to go wrong, so the whole of the work is in the two things it leaves unsaid: how hard the eggs are boiled and how the bread is buttered.
- "Hard as if for a salad"Ten to twelve minutes in simmering water for large eggs, then straight into cold water. Longer gives the grey-green ring at the yolk and a sulphurous smell that dominates a sandwich.
- Cold means coldThe instruction to wait until "quite cold" is structural, not fussy. A warm yolk crumbles under the knife and a warm egg sweats into the bread; chill the eggs thoroughly, ideally an hour or more.
- SlicingA wet, thin-bladed knife wiped between cuts, or a wire egg slicer, keeps the yolk discs intact. Broken slices are no loss in flavour but the sandwich holds together far better when they are whole.
- "Nicely-prepared bread and butter"The recipe does not say more, but thin slices of a close-crumbed loaf, buttered before cutting, would suit it. The butter also acts as a moisture barrier, which matters for a sandwich meant to be carried.
- SeasoningThe recipe seasons the egg slices themselves rather than the bread, so salt and pepper the cut faces. Mustard worked into the butter turns up in other sandwich recipes of the period if you want more.
- Carrying themCooked egg is a good medium for bacteria at warm temperatures. For the "journey taken in haste" these were written for, keep them cool and eat them within a few hours rather than leaving them in a bag all day.
The closing line explains why the recipe earns a place at all: the sandwich in late Victorian Britain was often travel food, the thing packed for a railway journey, a shooting party or a day's outing when no dining car or inn was to be had, though it belonged just as much to tea tables, ball suppers and luncheon. Hard-boiled eggs and buttered bread were the two things any household could produce without notice, and the combination needed no cooking beyond a pan of water. The word "delicate" here carries its period sense of light and refined rather than fragile, distinguishing this from the potted meat and beef sandwiches that filled the same luncheon baskets. Later cookery would mash the eggs with mayonnaise into a paste; the sliced-egg version given here is the older and plainer form, and depends entirely on good butter and a well-cut loaf.