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Horse-Radish Sandwich
Cream two tablespoonfuls of butter, add three tablespoonfuls of prepared horse-radish, spread between exceedingly thin slices of white bread. Garnish with parsley; serve as soon as made.
A two-ingredient spread that lives or dies on the horseradish. The original gives no yield and assumes bread you have sliced yourself.
- Prepared horse-radishThis means grated root packed in vinegar, drained of most of its liquid before use. Modern jarred horseradish is wetter and often milder; drain it in a sieve and press it, or the butter will break and the bread will go soggy.
- Creamed butterTwo tablespoons of butter beaten soft, not melted, so it holds three tablespoons of grated root in suspension. Butter at about 65F takes the horseradish smoothly; cold butter will tear thin bread when spread.
- RatioThree parts horseradish to two of butter is aggressive by current taste, and untamed prepared horseradish is far sharper than most people expect in a tea sandwich. Taste the spread before committing it to the loaf.
- Exceedingly thin slicesHand-cut from a close-grained white sandwich loaf, since the book gives no measure and leaves the thinness to the cook. A day-old unsliced loaf cuts far thinner than fresh, and a serrated knife wiped between cuts helps.
- Serve as soon as madeThe instruction is doing real work here. Cut horseradish loses pungency on exposure to air, and the vinegar will seep into thin crumb, so these are best eaten promptly rather than held.
- YieldEnough spread for roughly six to eight small sandwiches, crusts trimmed and cut into fingers or triangles.
Eva Greene Fuller's The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book belongs to a brief American publishing enthusiasm, roughly the 1900s and 1910s, for books consisting of nothing but sandwiches, aimed at the afternoon tea, the card party and the picnic hamper rather than the family dinner. The compressed style here is typical: no yield, no timing, and the assumption that a cook knows what thin bread means. Horseradish itself is a very old European condiment, long associated with beef and with the bitter herbs of the Passover seder, and by the late nineteenth century it was sold ready-grated in vinegar in American groceries, which is what "prepared horse-radish" signals. Compounding it with creamed butter was a standard trick of the period, used with anchovy, watercress, nasturtium and mustard as well, since a flavoured butter both seasoned the sandwich and sealed the crumb against a moist filling.