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Cress-and-Egg Sandwiches
Pick the leaves from fresh cress, chop or break apart, season with French dressing, and proceed as above.
Imitation Pâté-de-Foie Gras Sandwiches.
Chop half an onion and sauté in a little butter; when delicately browned, add five or six chicken livers and sauté them on both sides. Cover with
A two-line variation that leans on the sandwich recipe printed just above it, plus the opening of a chicken-liver spread that the page cuts off mid-sentence. Both need a little reconstruction before they work in a modern kitchen.
- "Proceed as above"The method being referred to is not on this page. Given the title, it is almost certainly the egg sandwich immediately preceding: chopped or sieved hard-cooked egg bound with dressing, spread between thin slices of bread. Treat the cress as folded into that mixture rather than layered separately.
- French dressingIn American books of this period this means a simple oil-and-vinegar vinaigrette with salt and pepper, whisked to a temporary emulsion; period recipes vary in proportion, anywhere from about two to four parts oil to one of vinegar. It is not the sweetened orange-coloured bottled dressing that later took the name.
- CressWatercress is the usual reading, though garden cress and pepper cress were both sold under the plain name. Use the leaves and the tenderest stem tips only; older stems are stringy and will not chop cleanly.
- The hinge: dress lateCress collapses within minutes of meeting an acid dressing, and the water it releases will soak the bread. Dress the leaves and assemble immediately, or dress nothing and simply moisten the egg with mayonnaise instead.
- Butter the breadA thin film of soft butter right to the edges of each slice is what keeps a moist filling from wetting the crumb. This page does not mention it, though the instruction is common in period sandwich recipes.
- Chicken liversSautéing "on both sides" leaves the centres pink. Poultry liver should be cooked through to 165F before it goes into a spread that will be eaten cold and possibly kept overnight.
- The truncated pâtéThe liver recipe breaks off at "Cover with" — most likely stock or water, to simmer the livers until firm before pounding them with butter and seasoning, though the page gives no way to confirm it. Work from a complete recipe if you want to make it.
This book belongs to the brief, intense vogue for the dainty sandwich that ran through American middle-class entertaining from the 1890s into the 1910s, when afternoon tea, the card party and the chafing-dish supper all called for small cold food that could be made ahead. The genre is built on repetition and variation, which is exactly why this entry is two lines long: one master method for an egg sandwich, then a run of one-sentence riffs on it. Cress was a natural partner because it was cheap and gave a peppery lift to a filling that is otherwise soft and bland. The "imitation pâté-de-foie-gras" that follows tells its own story about the period: genuine Strasbourg goose liver was an imported luxury, and a domestic cook with a few chicken livers, an onion and butter could produce something that read as French on a menu card at a fraction of the price.