The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book (1909) | Hacker News Reader

The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book (1909)

publicdomainreview.org

68 pointsallthebest22 comments

Interesting things I noticed: (1) They say bread should be in "perfect condition [...] at least one day old". (2) They insist on removing the crust. (3) "Cut the sandwiches to either square, triangular, long, narrow, round, or crescent shaped". (Anyone ever had a crescent-shaped sandwich?) (4) "Rolled bread sandwiches" = pinned bread rolls. (5) The use of maiden hair fern is recommended for sweet sandwiches. (6) 'Smilax' = sarsparilla. (7) Americans were already widely using Tobasco sauce in 1909. (8) The word 'salami' was followed by (Italian Sausage) suggesting it was still considered exotic. (9) An early Welsh rarebit recipe. (10) Many interesting European references (Berlin, Limburg, Montpellier) (11) Reference to relatively obscure American ingredients of the era like 'Waukesha Cheese' (which apparently now no longer exists) and 'Hickory Nut'. (12) Suggestion of emptying (though a small hole) then stuffing a whole loaf with filling for picnics.

A 'sandwich loaf' for picnics is still around, and is delicious. http://www.thesimplethings.com/blog/picnicloaf

Also interesting that they recommend buttering the bread before slicing it!

I had to read that a couple of times to really get it, since buttering the end of a loaf is something I just have never done. Thinking about it, I guess it makes it trivial to get a perfectly buttered thin slice of (semi-)fresh bread. Neat!

I have also noticed that there are a lot of recipes that include 5-6 yolks of hard boiled eggs. My guess is that eggs have grown significantly larger[0], but still that would be a pretty large amount of cholesterol!

[0] My grandma used to halve the number of eggs in recipes from pre-WWII books

Regarding eggs and cholesterol its interesting to research the evolution of scientific "consensus" around this (and particularly the types of cholesterol particles and their relations to cardio vascular disease)

After decades of "cholesterol and fat are bad for you here's our diet/sugar free stuff, eat as much as you want"

We seem to be coming to the point where alternative explanations seem to be taking hold.

I guess in 1909 eggs=cholesterol=heart attack hadn't entered the public mind yet?

I suspect that chicken eggs being widely available, to absurd levels, might have something to do with it. When it is not uncommon for nearly everyone to keep a handful of chickens, you end up having to do something with all of those eggs.

The people I know that keep chickens, you usually can't visit them when the birds are laying without having to take a dozen fresh eggs off their hands.

I thought we have abandoned this whole eggs=cholesterol=bad nonsense few years ago now?

It's still working its way through our culture.

http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/panel-suggests-stop-warni...

Changing the dietary guidelines (in the US) was only recommended 2 years ago.

Like salt, fats, and other things, it'll take a while before we come down from some of the hyperbolic concerns that grew up around cholesterol.

Then we'll go to eggs=cholesterol=good, and then at some point we'll realize that it was probably something in between all along and that eating 4 eggs for breakfast is not exactly great either…

Crescent shaped sandwiches are quite common in Finland, You take a round rye bread with a hole in the middle and cut your crescent sandwich from that.

http://mtl.fi/effie/sites/mtl.fi.effie/files/styles/case_ima...

(Oh god how much I miss that bread here in Germany...)

What's that bread called? The things I find with a quick-and-dirty web search for "Finnish bread recipe" don't look like it.

Personally, I bake my own bread (whole rye, which doesn't exist where I currently live). It doesn't take as much time or effort as many people seem to think.

It's called Jälkiuunileipä.

There is actually some information in English about it in Wikipedia:

> The old tradition was that all bread in the house for the year was baked in a few days, in a large oven that took a long time to cool after being fired. Thus, jälkiuunileipä (lit. after-oven bread) could still be baked in the residual heat. The longer baking time in the lower temperature gives it a darker color, higher density and hardness than regular rye bread, comparable to a fruit cake. In addition to the traditional reikäleipä shape, there are also rectangular ruispala-type pieces available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_bread

Interesting, thanks! I found this recipe: http://www.kotikokki.net/reseptit/nayta/528268/J%C3%A4lkiuun... which looks quite straightforward once sent through Google Translate. I'll give it a try.

Another interesting thing is the whole chapter on nut sandwiches, and the use of nuts in a lot of the other chapters. I never would have thought of that (except for peanut butter). Also, some things in the "sweet" chapter are bizarre, like the "school sandwich": spread brown sugar between buttered slices of bread, and that's it.

I also like the spelling of "cocoanut".

When I was a kid I would often have a sandwich with butter and sugar sprinkled on top. Best snack.

As a german, I love the name for a sandwich with raw meat and fine chopped onions: "Cannibal Sandwich". Sounds much more badass than "Mettbroetchen".

That site looks to be a treasure trove of wonderfully odd and unexpected old books to enjoy

They all come from the Internet Archive which has so many great books like this if you can find them.

You don't know what you don't know -- so curation is a wonderful thing, I'm loving this book and I wouldn't have thought to search for it nor would I probably have come across it in my travels.

I got curious and looked up their donate page, they send you post cards and a letter from the editor once a year and stuff, so that's kinda neat. https://publicdomainreview.org/support/

The previous owner(s?) must have really like sandwiches.

I think it would be fun to try all of the recipes somebody had previously checkmarked as a way to stretch back into the past and connect with part of their life (and maybe gain some insight).

Besides, who can resist tongue sandwich? (p75)

Quick, someone feed the instructions for each of these sandwiches through an RNN.

obligatory Detroit Grand Pubahs.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8nxIFerN-A

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