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Potato Sandwich
Run three good sized boiled potatoes through the potato ricer, season with salt and pepper, add the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs that have been rubbed to a paste, and one tablespoonful of melted butter. Mix thoroughly and place between thin slices of lightly buttered brown bread. Garnish with a pickle.
A cold potato-and-egg-yolk spread, closer to a thick mash than a salad. It stands or falls on seasoning and on the potatoes being dry.
- Choose a mealy potatoBoil floury varieties — russet, King Edward, Maris Piper — and let them steam dry in the pan for a minute before ricing. A waxy potato riced while wet gives a gluey paste that will soak the bread.
- Rice while hotA ricer works most cleanly on hot potato; cooled potato is stiffer and compacts rather than passing through freely. Rice first, then let the mixture cool before it meets the bread.
- QuantitiesThree good-sized boiled potatoes is somewhere around 1 1/4-1 1/2 lb / 550-700 g; with four yolks and a tablespoon of butter that gives roughly two to two and a half cups of filling, enough for perhaps six to eight sandwiches.
- Season harder than you thinkPotato and yolk are both flat-tasting cold. Salt and pepper are all the original gives, and it needs a generous hand with both; taste the mixture at room temperature, not warm, since chilling mutes salt further.
- The leftover whitesFour whites are left over by design, since the recipe calls for yolks only. Chop them into the filling if you want texture, or keep them for a garnish.
- Brown breadIn a sandwich book of this kind, 'brown bread' most likely means a wholemeal or graham loaf rather than the steamed Boston brown bread of the baked-bean supper. A dense wholemeal sandwich loaf, sliced thin, suits the filling.
- Butter the bread thoroughlyThe thin film of butter is structural: it seals the crumb against moisture from the potato. Assemble no more than an hour or two ahead, and keep the sandwiches covered and chilled.
- Worth addingA spoonful of mayonnaise or a little cream loosens the filling to a spreadable consistency, and chopped chives or a dab of mustard lifts it without straying from the character of the recipe.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first years of the twentieth century, when the sandwich had moved out of the tavern and into the tea table, the club luncheon and the picnic hamper. Their appeal was arithmetic: a handful of breads multiplied by dozens of fillings gave the hostess a menu that required no cooking at the moment of serving. A filling like this one belongs squarely to the thrift side of the tradition — cold boiled potatoes and hard-boiled eggs are cheap, and the ricer, then a common piece of kitchen tin, turned them into something smooth enough to look deliberate. This particular recipe ends with a pickle garnish, whose sharpness does real work against a filling this rich and starchy.