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Hudson Sandwiches
2 tablespoonfuls Crisco ½ lb. cooked meat 6 stoned olives 1 teaspoonful capers 2 hard-cooked eggs Salt and pepper to taste Crisp lettuce leaves 12 picked shrimps
This is one of the Crisco book's shorthand entries: an ingredient list with the method left to the cook. The assumption is that everything is chopped fine, bound with softened Crisco, seasoned, and spread on bread with a lettuce leaf and the shrimps laid on top.
- The Crisco is the butterThe two tablespoonfuls are not for frying — they are the spread and the binder, creamed soft and worked into the chopped filling. Crisco is flavorless and sets waxy on the palate; softened butter or mayonnaise does the same job and tastes of something.
- "Stoned olives"Pitted, not crushed. The book does not say which sort; green olives in brine are the likeliest reading. Six is a small amount, so chop them fine so the flavor carries.
- "Picked shrimps"Cooked shrimp, peeled and picked clean of shell and vein. The shrimp of the period were small, so twelve is roughly 2-3 oz of modern peeled cooked shrimp.
- The meat is unspecifiedHalf a pound of any cooked meat; cold roast veal, chicken or ham would all suit. Ham will season the mix on its own, so hold back on the salt.
- Hard-cooked eggsTwo eggs to half a pound of meat is a generous proportion of egg; the filling will taste noticeably of it. Chop rather than mash if you want texture.
- CapersA teaspoonful, drained and chopped. With the olives and capers both, the filling is already briny before any salt goes in — taste first.
- AssemblyNo method is given. The obvious reconstruction: chop meat, olives, capers and eggs together, work in the creamed Crisco or butter until the mixture holds, season, then spread on bread with a crisp lettuce leaf and the shrimps arranged over the filling.
- YieldEnough filling for about six generous sandwiches, or a dozen cut small for tea.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was Procter & Gamble's promotional cookbook for its new hydrogenated cottonseed oil shortening, with recipes credited to Marion Harris Neil. The sandwich chapter may have served to show Crisco standing in for butter in cold work, not just in pastry and frying, which would explain why a filling this savory opens with two tablespoonfuls of shortening. Names like "Hudson" are often said to have lent a plain mixture the air of a hotel menu, and the combination of cold meat, egg, olive, caper and shrimp is straight out of the Edwardian tea-table repertoire, where thin bread and a lettuce leaf were expected to make a light course out of leftovers.