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Peanut Sandwiches, No. 2
Mix the prepared peanuts with mayonnaise dressing. Butter two pieces of bread; spread one with the peanut mixture, the other with shredded lettuce, and press the two together.
A three-line assembly recipe that assumes you have already read the preceding entry in the book. The only real work is deciding what "prepared peanuts" means and getting the ratio right.
- "Prepared peanuts""Prepared peanuts" most likely refers back to the preceding entry, where peanuts would be shelled, roasted, rubbed free of their papery skins, and pounded or chopped fine — closer to a coarse meal than to smooth peanut butter. Pulsing unsalted dry-roasted peanuts in a food processor until sandy, stopping well before they turn to paste, gives that texture.
- RatioNo quantities are given. Start at roughly three parts ground peanuts to one part mayonnaise by volume and add more dressing only until the mixture holds together and spreads; too much and it slides out of the sandwich.
- The dressing"Mayonnaise dressing" here means a proper egg-and-oil emulsion, not boiled dressing and not salad cream. If you make it at home rather than opening a jar, use pasteurized eggs, since it is never cooked.
- SeasoningThe recipe seasons nothing, on the assumption that the mayonnaise carries salt and lemon. Unsalted peanuts will want a pinch of salt, and a little lemon juice keeps the peanut fat from tasting flat.
- Butter both slicesThis is the instruction that matters. The butter is a moisture barrier between the wet dressing and the crumb; skip it and the bread is grey and damp within the hour. Butter should be soft enough to spread thin without tearing the slice.
- LettuceShred it fine and dry it thoroughly — a salad spinner or a clean towel — or the leaf water will defeat the butter. Assemble these sandwiches within an hour of serving.
- Bread and cuttingThe recipe says only "two pieces of bread"; thin-cut white sandwich bread with the crusts trimmed and cut into fingers or triangles would suit a tea table. As a rough guide, filling made with about a cup of ground peanuts dresses four to six sandwiches, or sixteen to twenty-four small tea shapes.
The collection dates from what is often said to be the first years of commercial peanut paste in America, when ground peanuts were still novel enough to be treated as a salad ingredient rather than a pantry staple — hence a filling bound with mayonnaise and paired with lettuce instead of the jam that later became automatic. Peanut preparations of this kind are generally traced to the health-food kitchens and sanitarium diets of the 1890s, where ground nuts were promoted as a digestible substitute for meat. The presence of a "No. 2" is itself telling: it implies at least one other peanut sandwich in the book, a sign that variations on the ingredient were worth setting down.