Bread & Butter Pickles Sandwich

Bread and butter pickles were seemingly invented in Illinois during the early 1920s; at least, the type of pickles so commonly known by that name in the United States since that time up to the present. These pickles are also often called "bread and butter chips." The thing is, pickled cucumbers have been around for a LONG TIME, somewhere around at least 3000 to 4000 years. 

 

Sandwiches made of bread and butter pickles were common during the tough economic years of the Great Depression, as the sandwiches were cheap to make for many folks, and the limited ingredients were often already on hand to many families or individuals. I usually buy bread and butter pickles in brine spiced with whole dried red chili peppers from one of the stands at Cleveland's West Side Market, where the vendor sells them as "Sweet & Spicy." 

While white sandwich bread is traditional, you can certainly use whole wheat bread, or even rye bread, but rye bread will alter the taste of your sandwich; so, if that's okay with you, go for it!

Ingredients (per sandwich):

two slices of bread

2 pats of butter (or margarine), softened for easy use

6 to 8 bread and butter pickle slices, laid out on a paper towel to absorb excess brine

Butter one side of each slice of bread well. This will help to "waterproof" the bread from the pickle brine and keep the sandwich from becoming mushy. Lay the pickle slices (chips) on top of one of the buttered slices of bread, top with the other buttered slice of bread, buttered slice down. 

 

 

1) Bread & Butter Pickles Sandwich ...  2) Butter the bread clear up to the sides ... 3) With a chili pepper

WORD HISTORY:

Plateau-This word is related to quite a number of words. It is distantly related, through Indo European, to the adjective "flat" (smooth, level), a Germanic derived word, but in this case, borrowed by English from its cousin, Old Norse, and "plateau" is closely related to the "plat" of "platform," a word borrowed from French, to "plate," also borrowed from French, which had it from Latin, which had it from Greek ("platter" is based on "plate," but it was borrowed from the French that developed in English after the Normans arrived), and to "plaza," a Latin-derived word borrowed by English from Spanish. "Plateau" goes back to Indo European "plet(h)/plat," which had the notion of "to spread (out);" thus, adjectivally  "broad and flat." This gave transliterated Ancient Greek "platys/platus," meaning "broad and flat, widespread," and this was borrowed by Latin as "plattus," mean "flattened, flat," which gave Old French the adjective "plat," meaning "flat," and which was used as a noun to mean "flat or level surface of something," the diminutive form of which was "platel," and this later gave French "plateau" ('-eau' is a French diminutive progression from Old French 'el' from Latin 'ellus," ("ella" is the feminine form), from the Indo European diminutive "elos/olos," and the meaning of "plateau" being "flat/level piece of land elevated on at least one side above the land around it." English borrowed the word between the middle to late 1700s (sources disagree). The verb was derived from the noun in the World War Two era, with the meaning (often in the past tense) "for a person, group of people or business to cease to expand in some field, but rather level off, seemingly without potential to go higher," as in, "The last couple of decades have seen soda pop sales plateau, and then decline."