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Tomato Sandwich No. 2
On thin slices of lightly buttered white bread place a crisp lettuce leaf that has been dipped in mayonnaise dressing; on this, place thin slices of tomato, add a dash of salt, and spread lightly with mayonnaise dressing; cover with another lightly buttered slice of bread.
A plain assembly sandwich whose success rests entirely on managing water. Nothing here needs translating, but two or three habits from 1909 are worth keeping and one is worth adjusting.
- The hinge: butter both slicesThe recipe specifies lightly buttered bread on both sides of the filling. A thin coating spread to the edges also helps slow tomato juice soaking into the crumb.
- Salt the tomato early, not lateCut the slices about 1/4 inch thick, salt them, and let them drain on a rack or paper towel for 10-15 minutes before building. The recipe's "dash of salt" applied at assembly draws water straight into the bread.
- MayonnaiseIn 1909 "mayonnaise dressing" would usually have meant a homemade emulsion of raw yolk, oil and vinegar, often seasoned with mustard, and generally thicker and sharper than jarred dressing. Commercial mayonnaise works, though thinning it slightly with lemon juice moves it in that direction.
- The dipped lettuce leafDipping coats the leaf evenly. Use a firm inner romaine or iceberg leaf; soft leaf lettuce collapses under the tomato.
- BreadThe book asks only for "thin slices" of white bread. A fine-crumbed white pan loaf, cut by hand thinner than a standard commercial slice, is the nearest match.
- Yield and servingQuantities are left to the cook; one medium tomato fills two to three sandwiches. Trim the crusts and cut into triangles or fingers if serving at tea, and assemble no more than a few minutes ahead.
Eva Greene Fuller's The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) collects several hundred fillings at a point when the sandwich was becoming established American party food as well as travellers' fare, and its numbered variants — Tomato No. 1, No. 2, and so on — show how thoroughly the form was being catalogued. Bottled mayonnaise was barely available in American groceries at this date, so a cook following this recipe would most likely have whisked her own. The tomato itself had been a common summer vegetable in the United States for a couple of generations by then, and the construction depends on soft-crumbed bakery or homemade white bread sliced thin.