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Twenty Sandwich Suggestions
1. Raisins worked into Neufchatel cheese. 2. Chopped raisins, figs, dates or prunes, and nut-meats moistened with mayonnaise dressing or lemon-juice. 3. The well-whipped white of an egg mixed with a cup each of chopped raisins and nut-meats, seasoned with a little salt. 4. Peanut butter moistened with salad dressing and mixed with raisins, dates, figs or bananas. 5. Equal parts olives, peanut butter, celery, mixed with a little salad dressing. 6. Peanut butter mixed with chopped dill, sweet or sour pickles. 7. Cream cheese and chopped stuffed olives. 8. Chopped stuffed olives and chopped nuts, moistened with salad dressing. 9. Cream cheese and shredded pineapple between very thin slices of bread. 10. Tunafish mixed with parsley, lemon-juice, seasoning and a bit of onion. 11. Cream cheese and chopped nuts. 12. Ground boiled ham and chopped pickles or chopped peanuts. 13. Cottage cheese and pickles, olives, nuts or pimientos. 14. Currant jam with pounded walnut meats and creamed butter. Pass with cream cheese. Preserved currants may be substituted in this combination. 15. Boston brown bread with cream cheese or mayonnaise and chopped nuts and raisins. 16. Rounds of brown bread spread with chopped olives, minced lettuce and watercress, tarragon, paprika, parsley and chives mixed with mayonnaise. 17. Pimientos, cucumbers and onion or chives, minced, mixed with mayonnaise and spread on buttered entire-wheat bread. 18. Green pepper, pimiento and olives with mayonnaise. 19. Boston brown bread with minced corned beef seasoned with mustard and rubbed to a paste. 20. Cream cheese used with chopped parsley, pimientos and mayonnaise, chopped nuts, sliced sugared bananas, chopped pineapples, chopped or sliced olives, shredded sliced apples. The cheese may be rubbed with butter or the creamed butter may be spread on the bread.
These are fillings rather than formulas: no quantities, no yields, and an assumption that the cook knows how to trim and press a tea sandwich. A few of the ingredient names have shifted since the 1920s.
- Neufch tel and cream cheeseThe American Neufch tel of this period is a soft, unripened cheese sold in foil bricks, slightly leaner and looser than cream cheese. Either works throughout the list; bring it to room temperature before working in fruit or nuts or it will tear the bread.
- "Salad dressing" is not always mayonnaiseWhere the list says mayonnaise it means mayonnaise. "Salad dressing" in a book of this date usually means a cooked boiled dressing, thickened with egg and flour and sharpened with vinegar, which is tangier and less rich. Bottled sandwich spread is the nearest supermarket equivalent.
- Nut-meatsSimply shelled nuts, walnuts or pecans unless otherwise stated. Toast and cool them before chopping.
- Number 3 uses raw egg whiteThe whipped white is never cooked. If you make it, use pasteurized egg white, and keep the filling refrigerated and eat it the same day.
- Entire-wheat breadWhole-wheat, and in 1920s usage generally a fine-milled loaf rather than a coarse seeded one. A close-crumbed sandwich loaf holds a wet mayonnaise filling far better than an open artisan crumb.
- Boston brown breadA steamed molasses loaf, usually rye, cornmeal and wheat, traditionally cylindrical because it was steamed in a can, which is why number 16 calls for rounds. Canned brown bread is still sold in some markets; slice it thin and chill it so it cuts cleanly.
- Shredded pineappleA canned cut of the period; canned crushed pineapple is the nearest substitute, drained hard and then pressed in a sieve. Any juice left behind will soak the bread through within the hour.
- Peanut butter behaves as a savoury paste hereSlacken it with dressing or lemon juice first, then fold in the pickles, olives or celery. Modern peanut butter is smoother and sweeter than the freshly ground product of the period; unsweetened natural peanut butter is closer to what was intended.
- Quantity and assemblyReckon roughly 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of filling per sandwich, or about 1 cup for a dozen tea sandwiches cut in quarters. Butter both slices to the edges as a moisture barrier, press the made sandwiches under a plate, then trim crusts and cut just before serving.
Lists like this one were a staple of American women's magazines from the 1910s through the 1930s, when the sandwich moved off the workman's lunch pail and onto the bridge table. The crustless, thin-cut tea sandwich needed variety rather than substance, and editors obliged with numbered inventories of combinations that could be assembled from a well-stocked pantry shelf. What the twenty entries really record is a set of newly industrialised groceries: packaged Neufch tel and cream cheese, bottled stuffed olives and pimientos, canned tuna and crushed pineapple, and ground peanut butter, all of which had become reliable year-round purchases only in the preceding two or three decades. Peanut butter's place here is worth noting it is treated as a savoury binder to be cut with pickle, olive and celery, and jelly does not appear beside it at all, which is a useful reminder that the pairing now taken for granted was not yet fixed.