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Sandwich (Chop fine one-half cup each)
Chop fine one-half cup each of pecan and walnut meats, add one-half cup of olives stoned and chopped fine, moisten with a little mayonnaise dressing and place between thin slices of lightly buttered graham bread.
A straightforward filling that needs only a few notes on proportions and on what "graham bread" meant in 1900.
- Quantities and yieldA half cup each of pecans and walnuts plus a half cup of chopped olives makes roughly a cup and a half of filling, enough for four to six sandwiches cut in halves. It scales cleanly.
- Which olivesThe word "stoned" tells us the olives came with pits in; the recipe does not say which kind, though green brine-cured olives were the usual choice for fillings of this sort. Pitted green olives work; drain and blot them dry, since brine left on the chop will thin the mayonnaise and soak the bread.
- Graham breadGraham flour is coarsely ground whole wheat, and graham bread of the period was a soft, faintly sweet whole-wheat loaf, not a cracker. Any good sandwich-sliced whole wheat stands in.
- Mayonnaise"A little" is not quantified; one to two tablespoons is usually enough to bind the chop so it holds together when pressed. Overdressed nut fillings slide out of the sandwich.
- Toast the nutsEight to ten minutes at 350F, cooled before chopping, deepens the flavor considerably and keeps the walnuts from tasting flat against the salt of the olives. The original does not call for it, but nothing in the recipe argues against it.
- Chop, do not processA food processor turns nuts to paste in seconds and the filling goes greasy. Chop by hand, or pulse in short bursts and stop while the pieces are still distinct.
- Make-aheadThe filling keeps a day covered in the refrigerator; the buttered bread is what protects the crumb from moisture, so assemble close to serving.
Nut sandwiches were everywhere in American cookery between roughly 1890 and 1920, and this one sits at the meeting point of two fashions. Graham flour carried the reforming enthusiasm of Sylvester Graham's campaign of the 1830s and 1840s for coarse-ground whole wheat, and by 1900 graham bread was often served at luncheons and tea tables as the wholesome slice. At the same time nuts were being promoted, notably in vegetarian and sanitarium circles, as a protein that let a hostess serve a filled sandwich without meat. Pecans in particular were coming into commercial production in Southern orchards. The chopped olive is the era's favorite corrective: a salty, briny note added to almost any bland mayonnaise-bound filling of the period, and one reason so many of these sandwiches still taste balanced rather than merely rich.