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Apple Salad Sandwich
Chop fine two medium sized red apples and two stalks of celery; mix with a little boiled dressing and place between thin slices of buttered white bread.
A three-ingredient sandwich whose success rests almost entirely on the dressing and on how fine the chop is. A few notes on what the original assumes you already know.
- Boiled dressingThis is the cooked, egg-and-vinegar dressing of the period: yolks, vinegar, a little flour or mustard, milk or cream, thickened over water and cooled. It is sharper than mayonnaise and often thinner. Bottled mayonnaise thinned with cider vinegar and a pinch of dry mustard is the nearest quick substitute.
- Chop fine means fineA quarter-inch dice or smaller. Larger pieces roll out from between thin slices and the sandwich falls apart in the hand.
- Red applesThe recipe specifies colour rather than variety; if the skin is left on it gives flecks of red through the pale filling, though the original does not say either way. A firm, crisp eating apple holds up; a mealy one turns to sauce under the knife.
- BrowningToss the diced apple with a little lemon juice before dressing it, or dress it immediately. Cut apple discolours within minutes and this filling has no acid until the dressing goes in.
- Butter the breadNot decorative. Butter seals the crumb against the moisture in the apple and celery, which matters all the more on slices this thin.
- YieldTwo apples and two stalks of celery make roughly 3 cups of filling, enough for eight or so sandwiches cut in halves or quarters for tea.
- Make close to servingThe filling weeps if it stands. Mix it no more than an hour ahead and keep it cold; assemble just before the plate goes out.
Apple-and-celery salad is close to the Waldorf as it was first served — apple, celery and mayonnaise, the walnuts being a later addition — and by the time sandwich books proliferated in the early twentieth century the combination was common enough to need no introduction. Sandwich manuals of this era seem to have been written largely for afternoon teas, card parties and luncheons, occasions where a great many small, crustless, filled breads were wanted and where fruit fillings signalled a lighter, more feminine table than the ham and tongue of a man's lunch. Boiled dressing — thickened with yolks rather than emulsified with oil — is generally said to have been the ordinary American salad dressing of the period, cheaper than mayonnaise and made in the same kitchens that made custard.