Shrimp Sandwich
Minced cold shrimp, a celery stick chopped fine; add a little mayonnaise dressing, a dash of salt. Mix and spread on thin slices of rye bread lightly buttered. Press slices together and garnish with an olive.
A straightforward filling that needs only a few clarifications and one adjustment of proportion.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none. For two sandwiches, figure about 1 cup (5-6 oz) cooked shrimp, one rib of celery, and 2 to 3 tablespoons mayonnaise. Add the mayonnaise a spoonful at a time; the mixture should hold together, not slump.
- "A celery stick"This means one rib from the bunch, not the whole head. Chopped fine it should come to roughly 1/4 cup, enough for crunch without dominating.
- Cold shrimpCooked and chilled, then minced. Small salad shrimp work well and need only rough chopping; larger shrimp should be cut down so no piece is bigger than a pea, or the filling will not stay in the sandwich.
- Mayonnaise dressingPeriod sandwich books use this term for both true emulsified mayonnaise and cooked or boiled dressings, so it is not certain which is intended here. If you want something thinner and sharper, commercial mayonnaise loosened with a squeeze of lemon comes close.
- The breadThin-sliced rye, buttered right to the edges. The butter is not for flavour here so much as to keep the dressing from soaking through; do it before the filling goes on, and use butter at room temperature.
- SeasoningA dash of salt was the whole of it, but shrimp takes well to white pepper and a little lemon. Taste the filling before it goes on the bread, since you cannot correct it afterward.
- The olive garnishThe recipe says only to garnish with an olive; it may have been fastened through the top slice with a pick or simply set alongside. Trimming the crusts and cutting into halves or triangles is optional.
- Make-aheadThe filling holds a day covered in the refrigerator, but assemble within an hour of serving. Rye goes soft quickly under a wet dressing.
The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book belongs to a run of sandwich manuals published in the United States in the early twentieth century, when the sandwich had moved out of the picnic basket and onto the tea table, the club luncheon and the card party. The fish chapters of such books lean heavily on shrimp, lobster, salmon and sardines, all of which were by then widely available in tins or on ice, and all of which took kindly to being bound with mayonnaise. The formula on display here -- cold shellfish, minced celery, dressing, a garnish -- recurs with small variations across crab, lobster and chicken. The rye bread is the one particular touch, a note of assertiveness against a mild filling.