More weird-pile-o'-ingredient sandwiches for your wtf-ing pleasure

You ever get a hankering for a sandwich just before 3:00? Well, I have a pamphlet for that.

Well, I do in theory, anyway. Although the cover of Sandwiches Around the Clock (American Institute of Baking, 1950) suggests that the contents of the pamphlet will be arranged around time, the "recipes" (really just lists of things you can put together and spread on bread) are mostly themed by the target audiences-- children, men, party guests. So if you were hoping to find out the perfect mid-afternoon snackwich or the bread-fillers that might get you back to sleep if you wake up just before 3 a.m., this is false advertising.

Still, I found out that chicken must have been relatively expensive in the 1950s, as the Chickenette sandwich in the "Family Meal" section doesn't contain the ingredient you would probably assume is the main one.

No chicken at all! Just ground pork dressed up with veggies, peanuts, and mayonnaise.

At least the Hashburger is much more straightforward.

Yep-- canned corned beef hash on a bun! Dress it up with some tartar sauce, tomato, and lettuce, and gesture in a vaguely menacing way with your coffee cup if Walt or little Margaret seems like they might object.

I also learned that picnic time didn't necessarily mean grilling some hot dogs or hamburgers and calling it a day.

I hope those picnickers have something fun in their thermos.

In any case, it was much easier to prepare and pack sandwiches ahead of time than to cook on site. And doesn't a nice chilled sandwich sound good on a hot day anyway?

Well, maybe... Unless it's deviled ham blended with peanut butter, mayonnaise, and pickles.... Then all bets are off.

The book's oddest ideas might just be about what children like. It seems convinced that they really want peanut butter and cheese as a combo. 

And maybe it's right to some extent. Peanut butter with cream cheese and orange sounds weird but potentially good. I mean, cream cheese is good with pretty much anything, and people eat peanut butter with jelly all the time. Orange isn't that far off.

And then there's peanut butter and cheddar cheese...

Along with apple butter, which makes it a little like the apple pie + cheese combo. But also with peanut butter.

And then the book tosses the idea of peanut butter and just goes for the peanut paired with cottage cheese...

And mayonnaise... and onion salt. I guess I can see a few kids liking this, but they will also be the kids that everybody else tries to sit very far away from at the lunch table....

Interestingly, a lot of the recipes billed as being for kids contain no meat, but only one of them is explicitly named a vegetarian sandwich.

And this is just an extremely boring collection of raw grated vegetables bound with chili sauce and mayonnaise. It's hard to imagine anybody getting excited about this sandwich filling, much less a group of kids.

But hey, the booklet thinks the kids will get all excited for smoked tongue, too. 

Maybe kids in the '50s were way more open-minded about food than I imagine they would be. Or maybe everybody back then was just waaaay hungrier and would eat whatever anybody smeared on a slice of bread and told them to eat. In any case, I'm happy to eat peanut butter in my own weird modern way: spread on a flour tortilla, sprinkled with smoked salt, and rolled into a neat little spiral that is easy to scarf down between classes.