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Egg and Lettuce Sandwich
Place slices of hard-boiled eggs to cover slices of thinly cut buttered white bread, add a dash of salt and paprika, on this lay a crisp leaf of lettuce that has been dipped in mayonnaise dressing; cover with the other buttered slice of bread and cut diagonally in halves. Garnish with an olive.
A plain tea-room sandwich that depends entirely on assembly order. The instructions are complete as written; only a few habits have shifted.
- Butter both slicesThe butter is structural, not flavoring — it seals the crumb against the wet egg and dressed lettuce. Use it soft enough to spread thin without tearing the bread, and cover the slice edge to edge.
- Dip, don't spreadThe lettuce leaf is dipped in mayonnaise rather than the bread being spread with it. This keeps the dressing off the crumb, which should help the sandwich hold up rather than going soggy.
- Hard-boiled eggsCook eggs 10-12 minutes, cool in cold water, and slice with a wire egg slicer or a thin wet knife. Eggs sliced while still warm crumble and will not lie flat.
- Paprika in 1909Paprika -- The paprika called for here is the mild sweet sort, used as much for colour as heat. Smoked or hot paprika will dominate the egg; use sweet.
- Mayonnaise"Mayonnaise dressing" here is most likely a homemade dressing rather than anything jarred. Commercial mayonnaise works; a small squeeze of lemon may bring it closer.
- The bread"Thinly cut" white bread suggests a close-grained loaf cut thin, say around 1/4 inch. A day-old loaf slices thinner and cleaner than fresh.
- Yield and servingOne sandwich, cut diagonally into two triangles — a single portion at tea, or one of several on a luncheon plate. Assemble no more than an hour ahead and keep covered with a damp cloth.
- The oliveThe recipe says only to garnish with an olive, most likely a whole one alongside rather than inside the sandwich. A green olive, pitted or stuffed with pimiento, would suit.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first decades of the twentieth century, when afternoon tea, ladies' luncheons and the commercial tea room created demand for food that could be made in advance and eaten without a knife. Egg and lettuce belongs to the plainest end of that repertoire: hard-boiled egg was cheap, kept well, and sliced neatly, and mayonnaise-type dressings were by then familiar in American kitchens. The thin bread and the diagonal cut suit a sandwich that was expected to look composed on a plate.