Puritan Sandwich
Rub smooth the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, add a tablespoonful of melted butter, a dash of salt and white pepper, one-half teaspoonful of mustard and onefourth of a pound of American cheese grated, then stir in a scant tablespoonful of vinegar. Spread mixture on thin slices of lightly buttered white or rye bread. Put two slices together and garnish with a pickle.
A cheese-and-egg spread of the potted-cheese family, bound with butter and sharpened with mustard and vinegar. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the ingredient names mean something different now than they did in 1909.
- "American cheese" is not the wrapped sliceIn a book of this date the phrase means cheese made in America — a firm factory cheddar — as opposed to imported Swiss, Roquefort or Edam. Use a sharp yellow cheddar. Processed slices will not grate and will turn the spread greasy.
- Grate it fineThe spread is not cooked, so the cheese only softens as much as the butter and mashing allow. Use the small holes of a box grater or a microplane; coarse shreds stay stringy and the sandwich will not hold together.
- QuantitiesA quarter pound of cheese is 4 oz, roughly 1 cup grated. With one yolk, a tablespoon of butter and the vinegar this yields about 3/4 cup of spread — enough for four to five sandwiches cut in halves.
- The mustardHalf a teaspoon most likely means dry mustard powder; American cookbooks of the period often use "mustard" unqualified for the powder, though not consistently. Prepared mustard would add a second dose of vinegar and thin the mixture.
- Order of workMash the yolk with the melted butter first, into a smooth paste, then work in the seasonings and cheese, and add the vinegar last. Vinegar against a dry yolk makes lumps that will not smooth out later.
- Use the white tooThe recipe calls only for the yolk. Chop the leftover white finely and fold it in if you want a coarser spread, or save it for a garnish rather than discarding it.
- Bread and holdingThin-sliced white or rye, lightly buttered, keeps the vinegar from soaking through. The spread firms in the refrigerator; let it come back to cool room temperature before spreading or it will tear the bread.
Eva Greene Fuller's The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) catalogues several hundred fillings at a moment when the sandwich had shifted from a picnic makeshift to the centrepiece of the ladies' luncheon, the card party and the church supper. Names like "Puritan" were applied loosely and rarely explained; here it seems to signal New England plainness — cheese, egg, butter, mustard, no anchovy or truffle — in a book that elsewhere reaches for caviar and pâté. The mixture itself belongs to the long English tradition of potted cheese, in which grated hard cheese is worked with butter and a sharp seasoning to make it spreadable and to extend it; here a hard-boiled yolk serves as the binder. Pickles, then as now, were the standard garnish for anything rich enough to need cutting.