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Tomato and Mint Sandwiches
Select small tomatoes, put them in boiling water for a minute, lift out, peel, and put them on the ice to chill. Cut white bread into thin slices and then into rounds the size of the tomatoes. Slice the tomatoes into thin slices, spread the rounds of bread with butter, put on each round a slice of tomato, cover this with mayonnaise. Sprinkle with chopped mint leaves and cover with another round of bread.
A tea sandwich rather than lunch, and the whole thing hinges on keeping the tomato from soaking the bread. Everything else is assembly.
- The dip in boiling waterOne minute is for loosening the skin, not cooking. Score the tomato skins first, drop them in, then move them straight into ice water so the flesh stays firm.
- "Put them on the ice"The original assumes an icebox; the refrigerator does the same job. Chilling matters because a cold, firm tomato slices cleanly and sheds less juice.
- Salt and drainThe recipe omits it, but salting the slices and letting them sit on paper towel for ten minutes draws out the water that would otherwise turn the bread to paste. Blot before assembling.
- BreadThin-sliced white sandwich bread, cut with a 1½ to 2 inch round cutter to match your tomatoes. Butter both rounds to the edges; the recipe gives no reason, but the butter also helps seal the crumb against moisture.
- MayonnaiseIn a household recipe of this period this would often have meant a homemade egg-yolk-and-oil mayonnaise, typically thicker and tarter than jarred versions. Any good commercial mayonnaise works; a stiff one is better than a loose one.
- MintChop it just before using, as bruised mint blackens and goes dull within an hour. The recipe says only "mint leaves"; spearmint is the likelier candidate for a sandwich of this kind, but peppermint is not ruled out.
- TimingAssemble no more than 30 to 45 minutes ahead, cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap, and keep cold. These do not hold overnight.
- YieldA standard loaf gives roughly 20 to 24 rounds, so about 10 to 12 sandwiches; a small tomato sliced thin will cover several rounds, depending on how thin you cut.
This belongs to the summer luncheon literature of the early twentieth century, when "cool" cookery meant menus built to avoid the stove in a house without air conditioning: jellied soups, salad plates, iced tea, and small crustless sandwiches. Tomato sandwiches were a fixture of Southern and Anglo-American tea tables, and the mint is the same instinct that put mint in juleps and pea dishes -- a cooling green note assumed to make hot weather more bearable. The round cutter is not only decoration: neatness counted in tea sandwiches of this kind, and cutting rounds means discarding part of every slice.