Home › Egg › Egg Sandwich No. 2
Egg Sandwich No. 2
Slice cold hard-boiled eggs and lay them between very thin, buttered slices of white bread, seasoning them with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Garnish with a pickle.
A three-line recipe that depends almost entirely on how the eggs are cooked and how thin the bread is cut. Both are worth attention.
- The hinge: sliced, not mashedSliced egg has no binder, so it slides out the moment the sandwich is picked up. Butter both slices right to the edge, which is what holds the rounds in place, and press the finished sandwich gently under a plate for a minute before cutting.
- Hard-boiled without the grey ringCover the eggs with cold water, bring to a boil, cover and take off the heat for 10-12 minutes, then straight into cold water. The green-grey ring and sulphur smell come from overcooking.
- Nutmeg is not a typoGrated nutmeg on egg was a common seasoning in Anglo-American cookery of this period, not an eccentricity. Use a few scrapes from a whole nutmeg; pre-ground tins go flat and turn dusty.
- Very thin breadA close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, a day old, cuts thinner than fresh. The recipe says only 'very thin', so cut as thin as the loaf will allow -- around 1/4 inch or less -- and use butter at room temperature so it spreads without tearing the slice.
- SaltingSalt the egg slices directly rather than the bread, and do it just before assembling. Salted egg sitting in the open weeps water and dampens the bread.
- The pickle garnish'Garnish with a pickle' most likely means a small whole cucumber pickle or gherkin laid on the plate rather than a slice inside the sandwich; a sour pickle suits it better than a sweet one.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; as a guide, two eggs will fill about three sandwiches cut from a small loaf, or a dozen small crustless fingers for tea.
- Holding timeThese are best within an hour. If they must wait, keep them covered with a barely damp cloth in the refrigerator and cut them just before serving.
Egg sandwiches multiply in early twentieth-century American sandwich books at a time when the sandwich is often said to have been taken up as ladies' luncheon and afternoon-tea food rather than laborer's fare, and a hard-boiled egg was cheap, needed no carving and was, at least by repute, thought to keep well for a few hours. Collections like this one typically run several numbered variations on a single filling -- sliced, mashed with mayonnaise, mixed with anchovy or ham -- so a hostess could ring changes without new shopping. The nutmeg is the period detail: grating nutmeg over eggs, custards and creamed dishes was routine in nineteenth-century English and American kitchens, a habit that faded through the twentieth century until nutmeg survived mainly in baking and in spinach. The instruction to cut the bread "very thin" and to garnish the plate rather than the sandwich points to the same genteel table, where a sandwich was expected to be eaten in a few small bites.