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Sandwich (Between thinly cut slices)
Between thinly cut slices of lightly buttered white bread, place seedless green peppers that have been chopped fine and mixed with a little mayonnaise dressing. On top of that place slices of hard-boiled egg. Garnish with a sprig of parsley and a small pickle.
A simple open-faced-style assembly from a book that assumes you already have mayonnaise and boiled eggs on hand. The only real technique question is keeping the bread from going wet.
- "Seedless green peppers"This means a green bell pepper with the seeds and white ribs cut away, not a specialty variety. One medium pepper, chopped fine, fills four to six sandwiches.
- Drain the pepperChopped raw bell pepper releases a surprising amount of water once salted mayonnaise hits it. Chop it, let it sit in a sieve for ten minutes, and blot it before mixing, or the bread will be soaked by the time the sandwich reaches the table.
- MayonnaiseIn 1909 this would most often have meant hand-beaten mayonnaise with raw yolk. Commercial jarred mayonnaise, made with acidified or pasteurized egg, behaves the same way here; use a thick one rather than a thin salad dressing so the filling holds.
- Hard-boiled eggSlices need to be firm but not chalky. Eggs held at a bare simmer for about ten minutes and then cooled in cold water slice cleanly; a wetted knife or an egg slicer prevents the yolk from crumbling out.
- Order of assemblyButter both slices right to the edges. The butter is not for flavor so much as a moisture barrier between the dressed pepper and the crumb.
- Thinly cut breadAim for a slice about a quarter inch thick, cut from a day-old sandwich loaf, which slices more neatly than fresh. Crusts were often trimmed for tea sandwiches and left on for heartier eating, though this recipe says nothing either way.
- The garnish is platingThe parsley sprig and small pickle most likely belong on the plate beside the sandwich rather than inside it. The filling will want salt and a little pepper, though the original does not say so.
- Yield and holdingFigure two rounds per person for lunch, four quarters for a tea plate. Assemble no more than half an hour ahead and keep covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) is a product of the moment the sandwich stopped being a picnic afterthought and became a formal course. Between the 1890s and the First World War, ladies' luncheons, card parties and afternoon teas created demand for hundreds of small, tidy, mostly cold fillings, and books like this one catalogued them by their principal ingredient rather than by recipe title. The instructions are terse because they were written for a cook who already knew how to make mayonnaise, boil an egg and cut a thin slice, and needed only the combination. Green bell peppers were a fashionable addition to American sandwich and salad work in exactly these years, prized for crispness and color at a table where nearly everything else was soft and pale.