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Mexican Sandwich
Put large square salted crackers into the oven to heat. When warm, put on each cracker a large tablespoonful of baked beans that has been mixed with a little catsup heated with butter and highly seasoned.
An open-faced cracker canapé from the era when "Mexican" on a menu meant little more than chili heat and beans. The whole dish hinges on serving it the moment it is assembled.
- The cracker"Large square salted crackers" are soda crackers — a saltine-type square, or a plain water cracker. The recipe gives no temperature: warm them on a sheet pan in a low oven only until crisp and dry, not browned.
- Baked beansMost likely Boston-style baked beans, molasses-sweetened and cooked with salt pork, though the recipe does not say. A can of the same style works; drain off most of the loose sauce so the cracker does not go limp.
- Catsup then and nowPeriod tomato catsup was thinner, sharper with vinegar and more heavily spiced than modern ketchup. If using a supermarket bottle, cut the sweetness with a splash of cider vinegar.
- "Highly seasoned"This is the instruction doing all the work, and the original leaves it to the cook. Chili powder, cayenne or a chopped pickled chile is what earns the name; black pepper and salt alone will taste like beans on a cracker.
- Heating the sauceMelt roughly a tablespoon of butter, stir in two or three tablespoons of catsup and the seasoning, and warm it just to a simmer before folding it into the beans. Boiling it down makes it cloying.
- Assemble at the last minuteA crisp cracker under warm wet beans softens quickly. Heat crackers and beans separately and top them as they go to the table.
- YieldAt the recipe's tablespoonful per cracker, a cup of beans tops somewhere around a dozen to sixteen crackers — enough for several people as an appetizer or a soup accompaniment.
Around 1900 "Mexican" functioned in American cookbooks as shorthand for heat rather than as a claim of origin: chili powder, cayenne, tomato and beans in any combination could carry the label, much as "Spanish" signalled onion, pepper and tomato. Sandwich collections of this period were driven by the fashion for afternoon teas, card parties and luncheon service, which demanded dozens of small, quickly assembled savories, and they include open-faced cracker canapés like this one, built almost entirely from pantry goods. Both components here were convenient: commercially canned baked beans and bottled tomato catsup were available as branded groceries, so a hostess could produce a "Mexican" course from two tins and a box of crackers.