Home › Egg › Bar Harbor Sandwich
Bar Harbor Sandwich
Cut the crisp lettuce leaves into ribbons with the scissors, salt and pepper and moisten with a little mayonnaise dressing. Place on thin slices of lightly buttered white bread; on each lay a thin slice of tomato and cover with another slice of buttered bread. Press together and serve as soon as made.
A lettuce-and-tomato sandwich with no cooking involved, so everything rests on the quality of the three components and on the timing.
- The missing eggThe sandwich is filed under Egg, but no egg appears in the text. The likeliest explanation is that the mayonnaise is doing the work — a homemade boiled or hand-beaten dressing counted as an egg preparation. Nothing is omitted from the instructions.
- Raw-egg mayonnaiseA mayonnaise of this period usually meant raw yolk beaten with oil and vinegar, eaten uncooked, though cooked "boiled" dressings were also in use. Commercial jarred mayonnaise is made with pasteurised egg and is the straightforward substitute; if you make your own, use pasteurised eggs, particularly for anyone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised.
- Serve as soon as madeThis is the hinge of the recipe and the reason it is written as a to-order sandwich rather than a picnic one. Tomato weeps within minutes and the bread turns to paste; the butter on both slices is a moisture barrier, so butter right to the edges.
- Cutting lettuce into ribbonsShredding with scissors — chiffonade by another name — lets the dressing coat the leaf and keeps the filling flat enough to press. Romaine or iceberg hearts hold up; soft butterhead collapses under the mayonnaise.
- Bread"Thin slices of white bread" suggests a close-crumbed sandwich loaf; the recipe gives no thickness, but something around 1/4 inch suits it. A firm white pain de mie, sliced thin, is closest.
- Salt the tomato separatelyThe seasoning in the original goes into the lettuce only. A light pinch of salt on the tomato slice as it goes in improves the sandwich, though it also accelerates the weeping — one more reason to serve immediately.
- YieldNo quantities are given. One medium tomato, a few lettuce leaves and about two tablespoons of mayonnaise will make three or four sandwiches; trim crusts and quarter them if serving as tea sandwiches.
Bar Harbor, on Mount Desert Island in Maine, was one of the great American summer resorts of the late nineteenth century, and by 1900 its name on a menu functioned much as "Newport" or "Saratoga" did — a signal of fashionable summer dining rather than any local ingredient. Naming plain dishes after resorts, hotels and cities was standard practice in the sandwich books that proliferated after 1890, when the sandwich moved from tavern food to the centre of the ladies' luncheon and the afternoon tea. The recipe itself belongs to the lettuce-and-tomato family, and it depends on mayonnaise made at home as a matter of course. Commercially bottled mayonnaise was slow to reach American groceries, which is why a cookbook of this period could classify a sandwich containing no visible egg under the heading Egg and expect its readers to follow the logic.