Waldorf Sandwich
Chop two apples, two stalks of celery, and one sweet pepper fine, add a little mayonnaise dressing, mix, and place between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread. Garnish with a sprig of watercress.
A 1900s tea-sandwich filling that assumes you will assemble and serve within minutes. The whole thing hinges on the apple: chopped fine and dressed, it browns and weeps quickly.
- Dress immediatelyToss the chopped apple with the mayonnaise as soon as it is cut so the dressing coats and slows the browning. A squeeze of lemon into the mayonnaise does the same job and is in keeping with the period.
- Why this sits under "Egg"Mayonnaise -- The filling contains no egg as such, but mayonnaise was understood as an egg dressing. If you are making the mayonnaise yourself with raw yolks, use pasteurised eggs for sandwiches that will sit out.
- "Sweet pepper"A mild bell pepper, the term used to distinguish it from hot peppers; green was usual, though red was also sold. One medium pepper is more than these proportions want; use half, seeded and cored, or the filling turns watery and grassy.
- Chop fine means fineEverything should be near-mince, roughly 1/8 inch. Coarse dice slides out of thin bread and tears it. Firm apples — a Granny Smith or a Braeburn — hold their shape where a soft eating apple collapses.
- No walnutsTheir absence is not an omission. The Waldorf salad as first published was apple, celery and mayonnaise only; walnuts became standard later. Add them if you like, but the recipe is correct as it stands.
- The breadThin-sliced white sandwich bread, buttered right to the edges — the butter is a moisture barrier, not a flavouring. The recipe does not mention the crusts, though tea sandwiches of the period were often served crustless.
- YieldTwo apples, two celery stalks and the pepper make a generous quantity of filling — enough for rather more than four rounds of sandwiches, depending on how thickly you fill them; quartered, each round gives four small triangles or fingers.
- TimingMake no more than half an hour ahead, covered and chilled. Beyond that the celery and pepper release liquid and the bread goes soft underneath.
The filling is the Waldorf salad, generally traced to Oscar Tschirky, the maître d'hôtel of New York's Waldorf, whose 1896 cookbook gives nothing but apple, celery and mayonnaise on lettuce. Within a few years the combination had escaped the dining room and turned up wherever a fashionable name could be borrowed — in sandwich fillings, in aspics, on canapés — which is exactly what has happened here. Sandwich books of this period were bound up with the ladies' luncheon, a form of entertaining that demanded a great many small crustless sandwiches with recognisable names. Watercress, sold cheaply in bunches, was a common garnish for anything meant to look cool and green on a plate.