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Sandwiches Filling
3 or 4 hard-boiled eggs, cut fine. 1 jar Mapleleaf cheese. 1/2 can pimentos. Mix all into cooked dressing.
A tea-sandwich filling written in the shorthand of its period: brand names, part-cans, and a dressing the reader was assumed to have standing in the icebox. The quantities below are what those phrases amount to.
- "Cooked dressing"Not mayonnaise but boiled dressing: a cooked mixture of egg, flour or cornstarch, milk, vinegar, mustard and sugar, thickened over water and cooled. Cookbooks of the period generally carried such a recipe, and the reader was assumed to have some made up. The recipe gives no quantity; start with a few spoonfuls and add a little at a time so the filling binds without going soupy.
- Mapleleaf cheeseA jarred cheese sold under that trade name and no longer on the market; jarred cheeses of the period were soft, spreadable and salty. Any mild processed cheese spread, or cream cheese beaten with a little grated sharp cheddar, will stand in for it; a small jar's worth, roughly half a cup, suits the quantity of egg here.
- Half a can of pimentosCanned pimientos came in small tins, so half a can is a modest amount: a quarter cup or so, chopped fine, is in keeping. Blot them dry or the packing liquid will thin the dressing.
- The eggsHard-boil and cool completely before chopping; warm egg will slacken the cheese and the filling will weep. Chop fine with a knife rather than pressing through a sieve, which turns it pasty.
- SeasoningThe original assumes the dressing carries all the salt and mustard. Taste after mixing and correct with salt; paprika is a period-appropriate finish.
- Yield and servingMakes about 1 1/2 cups, enough for 8 to 10 sandwiches on thin white bread with the crusts trimmed. Chill an hour before spreading so it firms up, and use within two days — chopped egg does not keep.
Mary A. Wilson is generally said to have written for a Philadelphia newspaper audience in the years around the First World War, and the cookbook attributed to her reflects a kitchen already shopping by brand: a jar of this, half a can of that. Two of the three ingredients here are industrial products, and their appearance in a sandwich filling marks the moment when canned pimientos and jarred processed cheese became pantry staples rather than novelties. The binder tells the older story: boiled or "cooked" dressing, thickened with egg and flour, is often said to have been a common American salad dressing in the nineteenth century, and was reckoned cheaper and more keepable at home than uncooked mayonnaise, which only displaced it as commercial jars became common through the 1920s. Fillings of this kind belonged to afternoon tea, card parties and lunch boxes, where sandwiches were expected to be small, soft and cut into fingers or triangles.