Peanut-Pickle Sandwich Filling

“A picnic lunch without sandwiches — whoever heard of one? You need heaps and heaps of sandwiches in enticing variety.” – Gleanings in Bee Culture, Volume 55, 1927

Although spring has been off to an erratic start this year, Marylanders do know one thing for certain: we’d better enjoy those nice days while we can. Even as the ground is thawing, it’s only a matter of time before its unpleasantly hot, humid, and/or mosquito-plagued.

With this in mind, I recently walked up to Cylburn Arboretum to marvel at their thousands of daffodils & eat some sandwiches among the greenery.

It goes without saying that humans have been eating outside for ages, but the concerted effort of outdoor dining for pleasure developed hand-in-hand with sport hunting. Nobility and upper classes have been hunting for fun and eating food outdoors for centuries, even as agricultural and poor workers did those same things out of necessity.

Daffodils at Cylburn Arboretum

As society became more urban and industrial, picnicking became popular for just about everyone. The Victorians, naturally, turned this into an elaborate affair with full out-door table settings, but things got more casual as automobiles provided a way for a family to have a day-trip in the suburbs.

Magazines and newspapers offered plenty of guidance in how to picnic properly. In the women’s magazine the Delineator in 1922, Alice Blinn wrote that a “walking picnic” or mountain climb necessitated that each hiker carry:

four full-size sandwiches – one “succulent”, one of meat, a “meat substitute” and one sweet
a cookie or two
candy or sweet chocolate
fruit
a teacup
a tea bag
sugar for tea

One individual could be tasked with carrying “one or two cans condensed or evaporated milk, small pails for carrying water and boiling it, and matches.” Picnic sandwiches, wrote Blinn, “must be juicy and succulent without being soggy… A supply should always be in the refrigerator ready for the call ‘let’s go picnicking!’”

Sarah Tyson Rorer sandwich recipe, 1912

A sweet sandwich would be something like cream cheese and jelly, while the succulent sandwich could contain “thin slices of Bermuda onion,” cucumbers, cress, beets, cheese, and “always a salad dressing.” Meat is self-explanatory, I suppose. Meat substitute could refer to nuts or “cold baked bean pulp.” “A slice of onion in the peanut butter sandwich adds zest,” Blinn advised.

Last but not least, candy was a requirement because “open air and exercise bring on a craving for the unadulterated sweet.”

The consumer age was well underway at this point. In 1915 the Courier-Journal in Kentucky reported that an array of exciting products was available to “sophisticated picnickers, the people who do everything in the most accomplished way.” These sophisticates could buy special folding stools, cooking kettles, first aid kits, picnic blankets, and even Maypoles in order to have a most accomplished picnic.

1935, Baltimore Sun

Olivia Conkling of Baltimore may have been one such sophisticated picnicker. I’ve written before about her collection at the Maryland Historical Society, which includes brochures for a waffle iron and a chafing dish, and countless clippings from women’s magazines, collected over the early decades of the 1900s.

Conkling seemed to have had a special affinity for sandwiches. In addition to clipping over a dozen different sandwich recipes – e.g. “World’s Fair Sandwich,” “Cream Cheese And Almond Sandwich,” “Hot Liver Sandwich Gives Satisfaction,” – she had an adorable little printed envelope full of sandwich recipes. The envelope was manufactured by Rust Craft, a maker of Valentines and other paper ephemera. It included recipes like “Ripe Olive Sandwich,” “Marshmallow Sandwiches,” and “Cream of Chicken Sandwiches.” Pretty much everything you would need for that walking picnic.

Rust Craft box of sandwich recipes for sale by tinprincess on Etsy

One news clipping, probably from around 1934, stuck out at me more than others: “Peanut-Pickle Sandwich Filling.” I don’t know what it is about pickles, but recipes containing a pickled thing seem to generate the most controversy. I figured I had nothing to lose. I’ve enjoyed questionable variations on peanut butter sandwiches ever since a childhood dare revealed that “peanut butter and Old Bay… is actually pretty good?!?!” I didn’t feel up to making my own peanut butter so I got a “natural” version – which is still probably a thousand times more sweetened than anything Conkling would get her hands on. Nonetheless, the sandwich was enjoyed by all, along with the spring scenery.

It seems like our modern sandwich definition has become so narrow compared with the infinite sandwich possibilities of the early 20th century. As I go picnicking about the city this summer, I think I will keep my mind open.