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Tomato Sandwiches
Remove the skin from a firm tomato and cut in thin slices. Peel a cucumber, cut in half and remove the seeds and chop fine. Lay the tomato between slices of buttered bread, cover with the cucumber and season well with black pepper and salt.
A tea sandwich that lives or dies on moisture control. The recipe assumes you know that, so it is worth spelling out.
- Salt and drain firstLay the tomato slices and chopped cucumber on paper towels or a rack, salt them lightly, and give them 15-20 minutes before assembling. Blot dry. Season again inside the sandwich as directed; the initial salting is for drawing water, not flavour.
- The butter is structuralSpread it to the very edge of each slice and use it soft rather than melted. It acts as a barrier between wet vegetable and bread, which may be part of why the recipe calls for buttered bread rather than plain.
- Skinning the tomatoA 15-second dip in boiling water then cold loosens the skin cleanly. A firm tomato slices thinner and leaks less than a dead-ripe one, which may be why the original specifies 'firm'.
- BreadClose-grained white sandwich bread, cut thin, suits this filling; crusts are often trimmed for tea service, though the recipe says nothing about either. Coarse or very open-crumbed bread soaks through quickly.
- PepperBlack pepper can be assertive here; with salt it is the only seasoning in the sandwich. Nothing else in the recipe brings heat.
- Yield and timingThe recipe gives no quantities beyond one tomato and one cucumber (halved only to remove the seeds), so yield is a matter of judgement -- roughly four sandwiches, cut into fingers or triangles. Assemble close to serving and keep covered and chilled rather than making them far ahead.
Thin buttered bread with cucumber was a long-established tea-table item before this recipe appeared, and vegetable sandwiches of this kind sit in that register. Note what is absent -- no mayonnaise, no lettuce, no cheese -- which keeps the recipe closer to a tea sandwich than a luncheon plate.