Home › Sandwiches › Tomato Sandwiches
Tomato Sandwiches
1 tablespoonful flour 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 cupful water 1½ tablespoonfuls sugar ½ cupful vinegar Few grains red pepper 2 eggs well beaten 1 teaspoonful salt Firm ripe tomatoes
The book gives only the ingredient list; the method is the standard boiled (cooked) dressing of the period, thickened over heat and spread on bread with sliced tomato. Everything below assumes that reading.
- The hinge: cook it gentlyWhisk the flour into the melted Crisco, add water and vinegar, cook until it thickens, then temper the hot mixture into the beaten eggs before returning it to low heat. Dumping eggs straight into a boiling base gives you sweet-sour scrambled egg, which no amount of beating will smooth out.
- CriscoHydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold from 1911 and still on shelves, though reformulated to remove trans fats. Modern all-vegetable shortening works identically here; butter gives a better flavour and behaves the same way in a roux this small.
- Vinegar strengthHalf a cup of vinegar to one cup of water is sharp by current taste. Household vinegar of the period was not necessarily standardised to today's 5 percent, so taste the finished dressing and slacken with a little more water if it bites.
- "Few grains red pepper"Cayenne rather than paprika or chilli flakes. A bare pinch, less than an eighth of a teaspoon, enough to warm the back of the palate without colouring the dressing.
- Egg safetyThe dressing is a cooked custard. Once the eggs are in, bring it to about 160F/71C, at which point it will coat a spoon and the eggs are safe; keep it below a boil from then on or the eggs will curdle.
- The tomatoesSlice thin, lay on a rack or paper, and salt lightly for ten minutes to draw out water, then blot. Untreated tomato slices will soak the bread through within minutes, which is why the recipe specifies firm ripe fruit.
- Assembly and yieldThe dressing makes roughly a cup and a half, enough for a dozen or more sandwiches. Spread it on both cut faces of thin white bread as a moisture barrier. The book gives no assembly instructions; trimmed crusts and triangles or fingers would suit the tea table.
- KeepingCooked dressing refrigerates for about three days in a covered jar and thickens as it chills. Loosen with a spoonful of water or cream before spreading.
The Story of Crisco (1913), written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, was a promotional cookbook for a product then only two years old: hydrogenated cottonseed oil sold as a substitute for both lard and butter. Its recipes are ordinary American household cookery with Crisco written into every one, which is why a shortening appears in a sandwich dressing that would otherwise have called for butter or no fat at all. The dressing itself is a boiled dressing, the flour-thickened, vinegar-sharpened cousin of mayonnaise widely used in American home kitchens before commercial mayonnaise became cheap and common; it used fewer eggs and no oil to emulsify. The tomato sandwich belongs to the same moment as the ladies' luncheon and the afternoon tea table, when thin bread, trimmed crusts and a well-behaved filling were the whole point.