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Traveller's Sandwich
Chop hard-boiled eggs fine, add a few minced olives, season with lemon juice; mix with butter, creamed. Spread on thin slices of white bread.
A short formula that assumes you know the proportions, which is typical of sandwich books of the period. The whole thing hinges on the butter being properly creamed before the egg goes in.
- ProportionsThe original gives none. For four sandwiches, figure 3 hard-boiled eggs, 6 to 8 pitted green olives minced fine, 3 tablespoons softened butter and roughly a teaspoon of lemon juice. The recipe names no salt or pepper at all; the olives bring most of the salt.
- "Butter, creamed"This means butter beaten alone until it is pale and soft enough to spread without tearing bread, not butter melted. Let it sit at room temperature 30 minutes, then work it with a fork or spoon before adding anything else. Melted butter will separate and soak the crumb.
- Hard-boiled eggsCover eggs by an inch of water, bring to a boil, cover and take off the heat for 10 to 12 minutes, then cool in cold water. Longer boiling over direct heat is what produces the grey-green yolk ring and the sulphurous edge.
- OlivesRead this as plain brine-cured green olives rather than anything elaborately dressed. Pimiento-stuffed olives work and add colour; skip anything marinated in herbs or garlic, which will bury the egg.
- Lemon juiceAdd it a few drops at a time and taste. Too much and the creamed butter loosens into something closer to a dressing than a spread.
- "Thin slices of white bread"A close-crumbed sandwich loaf cut about a quarter inch thick; trim the crusts if you like, though the recipe does not say to. Buttering the bread lightly as well as filling it helps if the sandwiches are to sit before eating.
- Keeping and yieldMakes about a cup of filling, enough for four full sandwiches or a dozen small cut ones. Egg filling should be kept cold and eaten the same day; the name notwithstanding, do not let it ride unrefrigerated for hours.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the early twentieth century, when the sandwich was moving from tavern food to the respectable luncheon, picnic hamper and railway journey. The name "traveller's" suggests the last of those, though the recipe itself does not explain it; the filling is bound with butter rather than mayonnaise, which is the sturdier choice in the absence of refrigeration, since butter does not break the way a homemade emulsion can in the warm. Chopped egg with olives and lemon turns up in a number of variations in such collections, differing mainly in whether the binder is butter, cream cheese or dressing. Imported Spanish olives were increasingly available in American groceries by the turn of the century, and cookbooks of the period reach for them as an easy note of savoury sharpness.