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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 proportions-free suggestions rather than recipes, meant to be scaled by eye for a tea table or a lunch box. A few of the ingredient names and one of the techniques need translating.
- "Salad dressing" is not always mayonnaiseThe book distinguishes between mayonnaise and plain "salad dressing," which in this period usually meant a cooked boiled dressing thickened with egg and flour and sharpened with vinegar. It is tangier and less rich than mayonnaise; either works, but boiled dressing is closer to the intent where the two are named separately.
- Neufchatel and cream cheeseAmerican Neufchatel is a soft fresh cheese with less butterfat than cream cheese, not the French bloomy-rind original. Either will serve here.
- Raw egg white in No. 3The whipped white is never cooked. Use pasteurized whites if you are serving children, pregnant women or anyone immune-compromised, and keep the finished sandwiches cold.
- Entire-wheat breadWhole-wheat. Period "entire wheat" flour was not necessarily as coarse as modern stone-ground whole wheat, so a soft sandwich loaf is probably nearer the mark than a dense bakery boule.
- Boston brown breadThe steamed loaf of rye, cornmeal and molasses, often baked or steamed in a tin so that it slices into rounds; No. 16 accordingly calls for rounds spread rather than a two-slice sandwich. It slices more cleanly cold.
- Shredded pineappleCanned pineapple, drained hard. Undrained fruit will soak thin bread quickly, and No. 9 does specify very thin slices.
- Butter the breadNote the last line: creamed butter spread on the bread, or worked into the cheese. This is the hinge for any moist filling on thin bread — a thin film of soft butter waterproofs the crumb and is the difference between a tea sandwich and a wet one.
- Yield and holdingFigure roughly a cup of filling for a dozen small sandwiches made from a thin-sliced loaf. Cut after filling, cover with a damp cloth and refrigerate; the fruit-and-nut mixtures hold a few hours, the cucumber and watercress ones an hour at most.
Butterick published this in the middle of a genuine American sandwich craze. Between about 1900 and the 1920s the sandwich moved from a workman's dinner pail to the centre of the ladies' luncheon, the bridge party and the church supper, and cookbooks began printing lists exactly like this one — combinations rather than recipes, on the assumption that any competent housekeeper could judge quantities herself. The list is a snapshot of what was newly available in a grocery: commercially packed cream cheese, stuffed olives and pimientos in jars, canned tuna (the California pack is generally traced to the first decade of the century), and above all peanut butter, still novel enough that it turns up here paired with bananas, dill pickles and olives with equal confidence. The heavy use of raisins, dates and nuts also reflects a period enthusiasm for "nut and fruit" sandwiches as wholesome meatless food, promoted by vegetarian and health reformers and absorbed, without the ideology, into ordinary entertaining.