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Carolina Sandwiches
Chop slices of cold bacon and a bit of sweet onion. Add the juice of a lemon. Spread on bread cut rather thick and in small squares.
A three-line sandwich filling that depends entirely on the quality of its three components. The instructions assume leftovers from breakfast and a loaf cut by hand.
- "Cold bacon" means cookedThis is yesterday's fried or broiled bacon, gone cold and firm, not raw side meat. Chop it fine enough to hold together as a spread rather than leaving strips that pull out of the sandwich in one piece.
- Sweet onionAlmost certainly a mild onion, sweet enough to eat uncooked without sharpness. Among modern varieties, Vidalia, Walla Walla or a mild red onion all work as substitutes; a strong yellow cooking onion will overwhelm the bacon.
- "A bit"Genuinely unquantified. A tablespoon of finely minced onion to a half cup of chopped bacon is a reasonable starting ratio; the onion is a seasoning here, not a filling.
- The lemon juiceA whole lemon is a great deal of acid for a few slices of bacon, and it will slacken the mixture into something wet. Add it a little at a time until the chopped bacon just moistens and tastes bright, then stop.
- Nothing binds itThere is no butter, mayonnaise or dressing in the original, so the filling is loose by design. Buttering the bread on the cut face keeps the juice from soaking through, which is likely why the bread is specified thick.
- Bread and shapeSmall squares of thick bread suggest something closer to a tea sandwich or canape, a bite or two rather than a lunch sandwich. Sturdy white or a firm wheat loaf holds up better than a soft modern sandwich bread.
- Yield and timingOn the suggested ratio, half a cup of chopped bacon would dress roughly a dozen small squares. Assemble close to serving; the acid and the bacon fat will soak into the bread if the sandwiches stand.
Sandwich chapters expanded sharply in American cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, driven by afternoon teas, card parties, picnics and the railway lunch basket, and compilers filled them with dozens of brief variations on a formula: chop something cold, moisten it, spread it thin. This one belongs to the frugal end of that genre, built on breakfast bacon that would otherwise have been reheated, with onion and lemon standing in for a dressing. The regional name is decorative rather than documentary — books of this period attached place names (Carolina, Saratoga, Newport, Boston) to sandwiches and salads fairly freely, and there is no particular evidence tying this combination to the Carolinas beyond the general Southern association with cured pork.