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Sandwich (Slice a tomato thin)
Slice a tomato thin and sprinkle with salt. Mix one-half cup of horse-radish with two tablespoonfuls of mayonnaise dressing. Spread thin slices of lightly buttered white bread with the horse-radish mixture, and put the sliced tomato between.
A four-ingredient sandwich whose success rests entirely on managing water and heat — the tomato's juice and the horseradish's bite.
- Drain the tomatoSalting is not just for flavour: lay the slices on paper towel or a rack for 10-15 minutes and blot them dry. Put them on the bread wet and the sandwich collapses within minutes.
- What kind of horseradishHalf a cup of freshly grated root to two tablespoons of mayonnaise is savage by modern taste. Jarred prepared horseradish, squeezed dry of its vinegar, is the practical substitute, and even then start with a quarter cup and work up.
- Squeeze out the vinegarPrepared horseradish carries a lot of brine. Press it in a sieve or twist it in a cloth before mixing, or the spread will slide off the bread and soak it.
- The mayonnaiseIn 1909 this meant a hand-beaten raw-yolk dressing. Commercial mayonnaise is made with pasteurised egg and behaves the same here; if you make your own for an uncooked spread, use pasteurised eggs and keep it cold.
- Butter is structuralThe thin film of butter is there to waterproof the crumb against tomato juice, so spread it to the edges. Softened, not melted.
- Bread and assemblyThin-sliced firm white sandwich bread, crusts trimmed if serving for tea. Assemble no more than half an hour ahead and keep covered with a damp cloth.
- YieldThe quantities given make enough spread for roughly four to six rounds, depending on how heavily you apply it.
The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book belongs to the brief American vogue, roughly 1900 to the First World War, when the sandwich moved from a labourer's dinner pail to the tea table and the ladies' luncheon, and publishers issued whole volumes of nothing else. Tomatoes and horseradish are both older kitchen staples pressed into new service here: grated horseradish root had long been the standard English accompaniment to cold beef, and combining it with mayonnaise rather than cream or vinegar is the sort of small modernisation that gave such books their titles. The trimmed white bread, the thin slicing and the assumption that the cook keeps mayonnaise on hand all point to a middle-class household with domestic help and a tea hour to fill.