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Red and White Open Faced Sandwiches
3 large pickled beets 1 pimiento 1 teaspoon minced onion 1/2 cup baked ham, chopped 1 cream cheese 1 tablespoon sweet cream 1 teaspoon chili sauce French dressing salt, paprika and cayenne 3 hard cooked eggs Chop beets and pimiento and add onion, ham, cheese, cream, chili sauce, French dressing and seasonings. Spread on thin, buttered rounds of white bread and garnish with alternate slivers of beet and egg white arranged in a circle around center of grated egg yolk to simulate a marguerite.
A canapé spread rather than a sandwich in the lunchbox sense: everything is chopped fine, bound with cheese, and the visual arrangement is half the point.
- "1 cream cheese"This means one retail package; small foil-wrapped bricks of about three ounces were usual in the period, though the recipe does not say. Have it fully at room temperature or it will not blend with the wet ingredients.
- Drain the beets hardPickled beets carry a great deal of brine, and the mixture will turn to slurry if they go in wet. Chop them, press them in a sieve or between paper towels, and only then combine. The same applies to the pimiento.
- French dressing, unmeasuredThe original gives no quantity, which suggests a spoonful or two used only to loosen the spread. In cookbooks of this period French dressing usually meant a plain oil-and-vinegar vinaigrette rather than the sweet bottled kind, though sweetened commercial versions also existed; add it a teaspoon at a time and stop while the mixture still holds a shape.
- Seasoning orderBeets, ham, chili sauce and pickle brine all bring salt. Taste before adding any, and use the cayenne with restraint, as it is there for heat against the sweet beet, not for colour.
- The garnish is the recipeA marguerite is a daisy. Grated hard-cooked yolk makes the yellow centre, and slivers of egg white laid as petals with beet between them make the red-and-white ring that gives the sandwich its name. Push the yolk through a fine sieve rather than grating it for a cleaner mound.
- Butter is structuralThe thin layer of butter on the bread rounds is a moisture barrier against the beet mixture. Do not skip it, and cut the rounds from firm day-old white bread rather than fresh, which tears under a cutter.
- Yield and timingThe quantities make roughly 1 1/2 cups of spread, enough for 24 to 30 two-inch rounds. Assemble no more than an hour or two ahead, keep covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator, and expect the beet to bleed into the bread if held overnight.