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Cucumber Sandwiches
2 very fresh cucumbers 1 tablespoon grated onion 1/2 cup mayonnaise salt and paprika Peel, slice and chop cucumbers fine, put in cheesecloth to drain. Set on ice to chill. Mix with other ingredients just before making sandwiches. Spread on unbuttered rye bread.
A cold spread rather than the English layered cucumber sandwich, and the whole thing hinges on getting the water out of the cucumber before the mayonnaise goes in.
- Drain hardChopped cucumber sheds a surprising amount of liquid. Salt it lightly, let it sit 20-30 minutes, then twist it in cheesecloth or a clean towel until it stops dripping. Skip this and the filling slides out and the bread turns to paste within minutes.
- Mix at the last momentThe instruction to combine "just before making sandwiches" is not fussiness. Salt in the mayonnaise pulls still more water from the cucumber, so a bowl mixed an hour ahead will be soupy.
- Grated onionGrate on the fine side of a box grater and use the juice along with the pulp. A tablespoon of raw onion in half a cup of mayonnaise is assertive; sweet or red onion is gentler than yellow.
- Mayonnaise quantityHalf a cup to two cucumbers gives a loose spread. If your cucumbers are large, or you want something that holds an edge when cut, start with a third of a cup and add more.
- Cucumber choiceRecipes of this kind routinely call for peeling, and the recipe here is no exception. With modern English or Persian cucumbers you can leave the skin on, but scrape out the seed core, where much of the water sits.
- Unbuttered ryeThe instruction is deliberate and worth following only if the bread is fresh and close-grained. A thin film of butter on each slice is the usual defence against a wet filling, at the cost of the clean rye flavour the recipe is after.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest something on the order of 8 whole sandwiches, or perhaps 24 crustless fingers or triangles for a tea tray. Assemble no more than an hour ahead and keep covered with a damp towel in the refrigerator.
Cucumber sandwiches arrived in American entertaining by way of the English tea table, where they were built on buttered white bread with little more than salted cucumber slices. The version here is thoroughly Americanized: chopped rather than sliced, bound with mayonnaise, sharpened with grated onion, dusted with paprika and laid on rye. That set of moves is broadly characteristic of the 1920s and 1930s, by which time commercially jarred mayonnaise had become a pantry staple and was widely used as a binder for sandwich fillings. Paprika in this period served as both seasoning and garnish, its red fleck doing the work of presentation.