Tartar Sandwich
Take two tablespoonfuls each of chopped onion, parsley, capers, and sour cucumber pickles. Mix with two tablespoonfuls of mayonnaise dressing. Place mixture between thin slices of graham or white bread lightly buttered.
A cold relish spread rather than a filling with body — the whole point is to chop everything fine enough that it stays put between thin slices.
- Chop fine, then drainOnion, parsley, capers and pickle all carry water. Chop them to a near-mince and blot on a towel before mixing, or the mayonnaise will slacken and soak through the bread within minutes.
- Sour cucumber picklesThis means a plain brine-and-vinegar pickle, not a sweet or bread-and-butter type. Cornichons or ordinary dill pickles are the closest match; anything sugared throws the balance off entirely.
- ProportionsEight tablespoons of solids to two of mayonnaise is a stiff mixture by design. If it looks dry, that is correct — add more dressing only a teaspoon at a time.
- Mayonnaise dressingAt this period this would have been made at home from raw yolks and oil. Commercial jarred mayonnaise is a workable substitute and is generally made with pasteurized egg.
- Graham breadGraham flour is coarse whole-wheat, unsifted. A dense whole-wheat sandwich loaf stands up to the wet filling better than white.
- YieldA generous half cup of filling, nearer two-thirds -- enough for three or four sandwiches cut thin. Make it an hour ahead and keep it cold so the flavors marry, but assemble at the last moment.
The name points to sauce tartare, the caper-and-pickle mayonnaise of French cookery, which English and American kitchens took up as an accompaniment to fried fish. The connection to the Tartars is generally treated as decorative rather than literal, though the origin of the name is not settled. Its appearance here, as a sandwich filling in its own right, shows the habit of transposition: a sauce, salad or garnish already in the repertoire could be thickened slightly, spread on thin buttered bread, and offered at a luncheon or card party. Sandwich books of this kind were numerous in the early twentieth century, when afternoon entertaining at home made a virtue of dozens of small sandwiches assembled from things already in the pantry.