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Salad Sandwiches
Under the head of salad sandwiches all forms of meat may be placed on lettuce leaves, put between two slices of bread, the slices pressed together, and the crusts trimmed. Cress may be used in place of lettuce. Where mayonnaise dressing is used the sandwiches must be made at the very last moment, and promptly served.
This is a method rather than a formula, and the only real technical content is in the last sentence. Treat it as a template.
- The hinge: dress at the last minuteMayonnaise on lettuce wilts the leaf and soaks the crumb within minutes. Assemble dressed sandwiches immediately before serving; if they must be held, butter both slices of bread to the edges as a moisture barrier and keep the dressing in a separate spoonful.
- "All forms of meat"Most likely cold roast, tongue, ham or chicken left from dinner, though the recipe specifies nothing beyond laying the meat on the leaf. Any cooked meat that has been properly chilled works; sliced deli meat is the modern equivalent, though it is wetter and needs the buttered-bread treatment.
- CressThe book means garden cress or watercress, both peppery. Watercress is the easier buy; strip the coarse stems and use only the leafy tops, or the sandwich becomes stringy.
- BreadThe recipe does not specify; tea sandwiches of the period were generally made from a close-grained white loaf, cut thin so it would not tear. A firm sandwich loaf, sliced thin, is closest; very open artisan crumb lets the dressing straight through.
- Trimming the crustsThe recipe presses the slices together first and trims afterwards. Follow that order, using a long serrated knife, so the edges cut clean instead of dragging the filling out.
- Mayonnaise and food safetyCommercial mayonnaise is acidified and stable; a homemade one made with raw egg is not, and neither is meat left on a buffet. Keep filled sandwiches refrigerated and do not leave them at room temperature more than two hours.
- YieldThe original gives none. Reckon roughly 2 oz of meat and one large lettuce leaf per sandwich; two trimmed slices cut into quarters give a standard tea-table portion of four small sandwiches.
The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern and magazine company, and its sandwich chapter reflects what the sandwich had become in American middle-class households by then: not a workman's dinner but a fixture of teas, receptions, card parties and picnic hampers, cut small and crustless. The classification here is telling -- "salad sandwiches" are grouped not by filling but by the presence of a leaf and a dressing, the sandwich version of the mayonnaise-bound salads that dominated genteel cookery of the period. The insistence on making them at the last moment is a reminder that these books were written for a hostess planning her timings closely.