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"Maggie and Jiggs'' Sandwich
"Spread white bread with horseradish butter and cover with thinly sliced corned beef, top with slice of brown bread and a lettuce leaf. Serve with a side of hot buttered cabbage."
This satisfying sandwich with the odd but apt name is quoted from a workmanlike cook book called "Salads and Sandwiches" by Emory Hawcock, who runs Hawcock's Cafe in Monmouth, Illinois. And another from the same excellent source is:
An assembly job rather than a cooked dish, but the proportions and the horseradish butter are worth pinning down.
- Horseradish butterCream 4 tablespoons softened butter with 1 to 2 tablespoons well-drained prepared horseradish and a pinch of salt. Squeeze the horseradish in a cloth first or the butter will weep into the bread.
- The bread pairing"Brown bread" here most likely means a whole-wheat, graham or rye bread rather than the steamed molasses loaf sold in cans, though the recipe does not say which. One white slice below and one dark slice above is the point of the sandwich; using two of the same defeats it.
- Corned beefDeli-sliced brisket, shaved thin and piled loosely rather than laid flat, gives the right texture. About 3 oz per sandwich.
- Order of assemblyThe lettuce sits on top of the dark bread as written, which makes this an open-faced or knife-and-fork sandwich. If you want it closed and portable, put the lettuce against the buttered white slice so it shields the bread from the meat's moisture.
- The hot cabbageQuarter and core a small green cabbage, shred it coarsely, and boil 5 to 7 minutes until just tender — long enough to soften, short enough to keep some bite. Drain thoroughly and toss with butter, salt and pepper.
- YieldAs written, one sandwich. The horseradish butter quantity above will dress four.
The name comes from Bringing Up Father, George McManus's comic strip that began in 1913 and ran for decades, in which the newly rich Irish-American hod carrier Jiggs pines endlessly for corned beef and cabbage while his wife Maggie drags him toward society dinners. Jiggs's craving became closely tied to corned beef and cabbage in American popular culture, and the strip is sometimes credited with helping fix that dish — more an Irish-American invention than an Irish one — as a St. Patrick's Day standard in the United States.