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Luncheons at Home and by Box: Sandwiches
Egg Sandwiches Chop the whites of hard-cooked eggs and put the yolks through a strainer. Season with a boiled or mayonnaise salad dressing and spread between thin slices of buttered bread.
Nut and Olive Sandwiches Chop equal quantities of English walnuts or pecans and olives, moisten with mayonnaise dressing, and spread between thin slices of buttered bread.
Jam or Jelly Sandwiches Mix together a quarter of a cupful of finely chopped English walnuts or pecans with half a cupful of currant jelly or strawberry jam, season with lemon juice if too sweet, and spread between slices of buttered bread.
Fig or Date Sandwiches Mix together half a cupful each of dates or figs and English walnuts, season with Luncheons at Home and by Box lemon juice, and spread on slices of buttered bread. The dates should first be cooked in a little water before being chopped and mixed with the nuts. 3 large sardines Sardine Sandwiches 2 tablespoonfuls butter teaspoonful paprika 1 teaspoonful lemon juice 1 tablespoonful olives, chopped 1 teaspoonful parsley, chopped Cream the butter; skin and bone the sardines, mash, and add to the butter, with the lemon juice and paprika. Add the olive and chopped parsley, and spread between thin slices of white bread.
Five fillings meant for thin-sliced sandwiches carried to work or school. Nothing here needs a stove except the dates, but the assembly assumes habits worth spelling out.
- Butter both slices, alwaysThe instruction to butter the bread is not for flavour alone — it seals the crumb against jam, mayonnaise and oily fish. Skip it and a box lunch is soggy by noon. Use butter soft enough to spread without tearing thin bread.
- "Boiled dressing"A cooked dressing of egg, vinegar, mustard, sugar and milk or cream, thickened over heat and stored cold. It was a common alternative to mayonnaise in period kitchens; a good bottled mayonnaise or a mustardy aioli stands in.
- English walnutsThe common walnut, as distinct from the native American black walnut, which is stronger and more resinous; the name is usually explained as marking that distinction. Walnuts sold in supermarkets today are almost always this kind.
- Sardine quantities"3 large sardines" means three whole fish from a tin; in a small standard tin that is most of the contents. Drain them well before mashing, or the two tablespoons of butter will not hold the paste together. The paprika measurement appears to have lost its fraction in the original text; start with a quarter teaspoon.
- Dates and figsModern Medjool dates are soft enough to chop without the preliminary simmering the recipe calls for. Dried figs and older, drier deglet dates still benefit from a few minutes in a little water until they mash under a fork.
- Jam sandwiches and lemonThe recipe's own instruction is to add lemon juice if the mixture is too sweet, which currant jelly or commercial jam often will be. Taste and add a teaspoon at a time.
- Bread"Thin slices" is not defined; something around a quarter inch works. A close-grained loaf a day old cuts best — fresh bakery bread tears; chill or lightly freeze the loaf if it will not cut cleanly.
- Yield and keepingNo yield is given; the measured fillings will cover a few sandwiches each. The nut, fig and jam fillings hold for a couple of days covered in the refrigerator; the egg and sardine ones should be made the day they are eaten and kept cold until the lunch is opened.
The box luncheon shaped this whole chapter. By the early twentieth century large numbers of clerks, teachers, students and shop assistants ate a midday meal away from home without access to a kitchen, and cookbooks responded with fillings chosen for how well they survived a few hours wrapped in paper — hence the emphasis on thin bread, buttered on both faces, and on pastes rather than slices. The nut-and-olive and date-and-nut combinations belong to a distinctly American fashion for sweet-savoury sandwich mixtures bound with mayonnaise that ran from about the 1890s through the 1920s, when tea rooms and women's luncheon clubs made the dainty sandwich a small industry of its own. Sardines are the tell of the era's pantry: a reliably shelf-stable tinned fish, cheap and widely available, that let a household produce something tasting of the fishmonger's counter from a cupboard shelf.