Lettuce Sandwich
Between thin, oblong slices of lightly buttered white bread, place a crisp lettuce leaf that has been dipped in mayonnaise dressing, and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.
Three ingredients and no cooking, so everything depends on handling. The whole point of the sandwich is contrast between cold crisp leaf and soft buttered bread, and that contrast collapses if the lettuce is wet or the sandwich is made in advance.
- Dry the lettuce completelyMayonnaise will not cling to a damp leaf, and the water it sheds turns the bread grey within minutes. Spin or blot the leaves and keep them cold until the moment of assembly.
- Butter is structuralThe thin film of butter on both slices is a moisture barrier between the dressing and the crumb, not a flavouring. Use it soft enough to spread without tearing the bread, and take it to the edges.
- "Oblong slices" means tea-sandwich shape"Oblong slices" -- The recipe asks only for thin, oblong slices; it gives no dimensions and says nothing about removing crusts. Cutting a sandwich loaf lengthwise, or trimming square slices into fingers, suits the shape described.
- Mayonnaise dressingAt the period this would have been made at home from raw yolk, oil and vinegar or lemon. Commercial jarred mayonnaise is a workable equivalent; if you make your own and are serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs.
- ParmesanGrate it fine and use it sparingly. Coarse shreds sit on the leaf and fall out at the first bite; the sprinkle is meant to read as salt and savour against the bland bread.
- Assemble lateFifteen minutes ahead at most. If they must wait, cover with a barely damp cloth over waxed paper and refrigerate, and expect some softening.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Quantities depend entirely on the size of loaf and how small you cut the finished sandwiches.
Sandwich books of this kind proliferated in America in the early years of the twentieth century, when the afternoon tea, the card party and the ladies' luncheon created steady demand for small, cold, hand-held food that a household cook could turn out in quantity. The lettuce sandwich was the plainest thing on such a plate, and the additions here show how it was dressed up: mayonnaise, by then a common American home preparation rather than only a restaurant flourish, and Parmesan, then sold mainly as a hard imported cheese for grating and valued because a little of it carried a long way. The insistence on thin, oblong slices belongs to the same moment, when white sandwich bread of even crumb was becoming more widely available and neatness of cut was part of what a hostess was judged on.