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Ginger Sandwich
On thin slices of lightly buttered graham bread, sprinkle finely chopped Canton ginger; press slices together.
A two-ingredient sandwich that stands or falls on the ginger, so buy well. A few notes on what the original assumes.
- Canton gingerThis is young ginger preserved in heavy syrup, sold in jars or by the piece and often labelled "stem ginger" or "preserved ginger in syrup" today. Crystallised ginger works but is drier and sweeter; drain syruped ginger and blot it before chopping or the bread will go soggy.
- Graham breadA whole-wheat bread named for Sylvester Graham, made from coarsely ground unsifted flour and usually lightly sweetened with molasses. A dense whole-wheat sandwich loaf is the closest supermarket stand-in.
- Butter"Lightly buttered" is doing structural work here: the butter seals the crumb against the ginger syrup and holds the chopped pieces in place. Have it properly soft so you can spread thinly without tearing thin slices.
- Chop finer than feels necessaryCoarse pieces roll out from between the slices when the sandwich is cut or lifted. Aim for pieces no larger than a match head, and press the closed sandwich firmly with the flat of the hand.
- Yield and servingThe original gives no quantities; figure two slices of bread and roughly a tablespoon of chopped ginger per sandwich. If serving them as tea sandwiches, trim the crusts and cut into fingers or triangles, and serve the day they are made; the recipe itself specifies none of this.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) runs to some four hundred recipes, including a section of sweet ones, and comes from a period when the sandwich was increasingly at home on the afternoon tea table as well as in the picnic basket. "Canton ginger" points to Guangzhou, long the export port for China's preserved young ginger, which reached American groceries in squat glazed stoneware jars that were often kept and reused as household containers. Graham bread -- the nutty, faintly molasses-sweet whole-meal loaf promoted by Sylvester Graham's followers from the 1830s onward -- had by 1900 become more a matter of taste than of dietary reform.