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Lettuce Sandwich
Thin slices of white bread with a lettuce leaf spread with mayonnaise dressing.
Nasturtium leaves or flowers and a little bit of mustard and yolk of hard boiled egg.
A sketch rather than a set of instructions, in the terse style typical of sandwich chapters of the period. The list after the lettuce is a second variation, not a garnish for the first.
- Read it as two sandwichesThe first sentence is a plain lettuce-and-mayonnaise sandwich. The second sentence has no verb and may be an alternative filling of nasturtium leaves or flowers with a little mustard and hard-boiled yolk, though it can equally be read as additions to the first.
- Mayonnaise dressingAt the period this generally meant an egg-yolk-and-oil emulsion made at home, though 'dressing' was also used loosely for cooked salad dressings. Commercial mayonnaise works; if you make your own, use pasteurised eggs, since nothing here is cooked.
- Thin slicesCut thin enough to be slightly flexible, roughly 1/4 inch. Tea sandwiches of the period were often trimmed of crusts and buttered thinly to the edges, which helps keep the dressing from soaking in, though this recipe mentions no butter.
- NasturtiumBoth leaves and flowers are edible and peppery, closer to watercress than to anything floral. Use young leaves; older ones are coarse and unpleasantly hot. Rinse and dry them well, and check for aphids, which favour the plant.
- Lettuce choiceCrisp inner leaves of a head lettuce hold up best. Trim the thick rib out or the sandwich will not compress evenly.
- A little bit of mustardUnmeasured, and best kept that way: about 1/4 teaspoon of prepared mustard per yolk, tasted as you go. Period mustard was often mixed fresh from powder and considerably sharper than modern jarred varieties.
- Yield and timingOne head of lettuce and half a cup of mayonnaise will fill a dozen thin sandwiches. Assemble within an hour of serving; cover with a damp cloth, as these go limp quickly.
Sandwich chapters expanded rapidly in cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, driven by the afternoon tea, the ladies' luncheon and the picnic basket, and by the commercial availability of soft, evenly cut white bread. Lettuce sandwiches belong to the lightest end of that range: no meat, nothing to keep, meant to be eaten the hour they are made. The nasturtium variation reflects a period enthusiasm for the kitchen garden's edible flowers, whose seeds were also pickled as a caper substitute; the plant was widely grown and cost nothing.