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Olive and Caper Sandwich
Stone the olives and chop fine, adding one-third quantity of capers, mix with a little mayonnaise dressing, and spread between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread.
A three-ingredient spread with no quantities given, so the balance is yours to set. The one thing that matters is moisture control: olives and capers both carry brine, and wet filling turns thin white bread to paste within the hour.
- Drain everything hardPat the stoned olives and the capers dry before chopping, then let the chopped mixture sit in a sieve a few minutes. Add mayonnaise only after that, a teaspoon at a time, until the mixture just coheres.
- The one-third ruleCapers to olives at one part to three is a real proportion, not a rough gesture; capers are far saltier and more assertive. Measure the chopped olives, then add a third of that volume in capers.
- Which olivesAn early twentieth-century sandwich book most likely means plain green brined olives, the sort sold loose or bottled in jars; a Spanish Manzanilla is a reasonable match. Kalamata or oil-cured black olives will work but make a much darker, oilier spread than intended.
- StoningPitted olives from a jar save the step, though whole olives crushed under the flat of a knife have better texture. Chop fine by hand rather than in a processor, which pulps them and releases water.
- MayonnaiseThe recipe's 'mayonnaise dressing' most likely means a homemade one, thicker and less sweet than most commercial jars. Any full-fat mayonnaise serves; avoid salad dressing style products, which are sugared and will fight the brine.
- SaltAdd none. Between the olives, the capers and the butter there is already plenty, and the mixture goes on tasting saltier as it stands.
- Bread and butterLightly buttered means a thin skim right to the edges, and it is functional: the butter seals the crumb against the brine. Crusts were often removed in tea sandwiches of this kind, though this recipe does not say so.
- YieldAbout half a cup of chopped olives with capers fills four to six thin sandwiches, cut into fingers or triangles. Best assembled within an hour of serving; the spread itself keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator.
Olive-and-caper spread belongs to the tearoom and reception sandwich of the early twentieth century, when bottled olives had become cheap enough for everyday American use and cookbooks filled pages with small, crustless, savory fillings meant for afternoon calls and card parties. Both principal ingredients arrived preserved rather than fresh — olives in brine from Spain, capers, the pickled flower buds of Capparis spinosa, from the Mediterranean — which is precisely why they suited a genre built on things a household could keep in the pantry and assemble at short notice. The same combination turns up in Provence as tapenade, a preparation named from the Provencal word for caper and documented in Marseille in the late nineteenth century, independent of and earlier than the American tearoom filling; nearer to home, it has a relative in the olive cream cheese spread that outlasted it in American shops.