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New England Sandwich
Mash beans that have been cooked well, add a dash of catsup, lay on a crisp lettuce leaf between lightly buttered white or brown bread. Garnish with a pickle.
A leftover-baked-bean sandwich, written with the assumption that a pot of beans is already in the icebox. The whole thing hinges on the moisture of the mash.
- Which beansThe recipe says only "cooked well," but the title suggests the soft, molasses-and-salt-pork baked beans of a New England Saturday supper rather than plain boiled navy beans. Canned baked beans are the nearest ready substitute; drain them well before mashing.
- Mash consistencyMash to a stiff paste that holds its shape on a spoon. Bean sauce and catsup together will soak through bread within minutes, so drain first and add the catsup by the teaspoon.
- Catsup in 1909Commercial tomato catsups of the period varied, but many were thinner and sharper with vinegar than a modern supermarket ketchup. A plain, vinegar-forward ketchup keeps closer to the likely intent; chili sauce is also in period.
- Brown breadThis may mean Boston brown bread — rye, cornmeal and wheat with molasses, steamed in a tin rather than baked, dense, damp and slightly sweet — though in sandwich books of the period "brown bread" more often meant a whole-wheat or graham loaf. Either works against the savory beans.
- SeasoningThe original gives none. Cold baked beans are flat; salt, black pepper and a little mustard bring them back without changing the character of the sandwich.
- Order of assemblyButter both slices to the edges, put the lettuce against the bean layer rather than on the outside, and the leaf acts as a barrier as much as a garnish.
- YieldRoughly a cup of mashed beans makes two generous sandwiches. Best eaten within an hour of making.
Eva Greene Fuller's collection belongs to a brief American vogue, roughly 1900 dash1915, for the sandwich as a genteel dish — luncheon, tea table, card party — rather than laborer's food, and books of the type ran to hundreds of short entries in which almost anything mashable was put between bread. Calling this one "New England" is a shorthand for baked beans and brown bread, the pairing that came out of the Saturday-night bean pot and the Sunday cold table, a habit generally traced to Puritan reluctance to cook on the Sabbath.