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Sandwich (Chop hard-boiled eggs fine)
Chop hard-boiled eggs fine, season with salt and pepper, add olive oil until of the consistency to spread. Use for a filling for brown bread sandwiches.
A three-line filling that stands or falls on the texture of the chopped egg and the amount of oil. Treat the oil as you would in a mayonnaise: added slowly, it binds; dumped in, it slicks.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none. Four hard-boiled eggs with roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons of oil fills four to six sandwiches, but work by eye and stop when the mixture holds together on a knife.
- Chop, don't mash"Fine" means an even mince, not a paste. A pastry blender or the tines of a fork through the eggs in a shallow bowl gives a more consistent result than a knife on a board, and a food processor will turn the whites to slurry in seconds.
- The oilOlive oil in American households of this period was often sold by the druggist as well as the grocer, and was generally a milder grade than a modern peppery extra-virgin, which will dominate the egg; a gentler oil is likely closer to the intent.
- Boiling the eggsFor a filling you want the yolks fully set but not chalky and green-rimmed. Twelve minutes in water brought just under a boil, then straight into cold water, keeps the yolk yellow and the flavor clean.
- Brown breadIn this period the term could mean a whole-wheat or Graham loaf, or the steamed molasses Boston brown bread; either works here. Butter the slices thinly to keep the oil from soaking through.
- SeasoningEgg and oil alone need more salt than seems reasonable, and the pepper should be freshly ground. A few drops of vinegar or lemon is outside the original but corrects the flatness if the mixture tastes dull.
- KeepingChopped egg dressed with oil is best made the same day and kept cold until the sandwiches are cut. Assembled sandwiches will hold an hour or two wrapped in a damp cloth.
Egg sandwiches of this kind belong to the period when the sandwich was ceasing to be simply a slice of cold meat between bread and becoming a category with its own cookbooks. Collections of sandwich recipes appeared in the first decade of the twentieth century to serve women's clubs, afternoon teas, luncheons and travellers, and they run to dozens of fillings organized by main ingredient. What is notable here is the oil rather than butter or boiled dressing: bottled olive oil was becoming more widely available in American cities, largely through Italian importers, and cookbooks of the period increasingly assume a home cook can obtain it. The pairing with brown bread is also of its time, when Graham and whole-wheat loaves carried a reputation for wholesomeness.