The first time I tried it was at Apple’s Way, a cute little tea room in Lake Jackson locally famous for serving plates of assorted triangle-cut triple layer sandwiches full of salad mixes — chicken, tuna, ham, pimento-cheese and egg — mostly to women.
Being unsuitably impressed, I avoided egg salad with something akin to religious fervor for fifteen years. My mantra, when ordering my favorite assorted plate of sandwiches during frequent stops at the tearoom became — “Anything but egg salad, please.”
But somehow, in the twenty years of residing near Apple’s Way, I grew a change of heart. Perhaps it was living amongst friends who had roots in the deep South which caused me to give egg salad another taste — or maybe it was a certain Methodist preacher who shamelessly hinted for egg salad sandwiches to be brought to every church function that made me wonder if there was a certain charm about egg salad I had previously missed.
Whatever it was, and whenever and however it happened, I now confess to loving this simple stuffing. My redemption was so absolute that when my good friend Ann and this certain preacher-friend and I would gather for our weekly book study on Wednesdays at Noon, it was me bringing in the sheaves — carrying individually wrapped egg salad spread on fresh-baked white bread as repentance.
Five hundred miles away and who knows how many years, egg salad has found a permanent spot on my rotating lunch menu — though no longer limited to Wednesdays. And while there are many recipes for egg salad — I believe my father favored one including chopped olives — I like this one the best. Appropriately, it hails from a recipe I found in the pages of Southern Living, which I’ve adapted to my own taste.
Thank goodness our hearts do soften toward new ideas and tastes when we keep minds and mouths open. Care to confess your own food conversion story?
Egg Salad Sandwiches
Makes 4 sandwiches
5 large hard-boiled eggs, grated 2 Tbsp. finely chopped celery 1 Tbsp. sweet pickle relish 1 Tbsp. finely chopped onion 2 Tbsp. mayonnaise 1 Tbsp. sour cream 1 tsp. dried salad seasoning 1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard 1/4 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. sugar 1/4 tsp. pepperCombine ingredients in a bowl. Cover and chill for an hour or two to allow flavors to mix and mingle.
To serve, spread evenly on a slice of white sandwich bread — fold it like my father would — or make it a holy trinity sandwich, by topping it with another slice of bread and another layer of spread and another slice of bread, slicing that triple-decker sandwich into tea-room triangles.
an everyday life 
But I’ve always thought of egg salad as pure Midwestern “cuisine” – when I was growing up, you couldn’t hit a church function, shower, card party, etc. without egg salad being there. Egg salad was our pimento cheese – I’d never had that until I came to Texas.
Sometimes I crave it so intensely I’ll make up a batch with just eggs, pickle relish and mayo. My recipe is the same as yours, as long as you leave out the mustard, sour cream and salad seasoning. Mustard in deviled eggs? Sure. But in egg salad? Never.
Gosh – guess what I think I’ll be having for lunch?
Linda,
Maybe egg salad is one of those foods whose origin everyone likes to claim.
My mother and mother’s family (as far as I know) never served egg salad — so I never tasted it growing up. But pimento cheese was plentiful, a staple of every picnic.
Interesting though that Mom first tasted pimento cheese not at home, but from a neighbor’s pot-luck offering, while attending an after-church picnic — at least I believe that’s how the story goes that my aunt told me not long ago.
I bet,even now, you’re enjoying egg salad sans mustard — maybe outside on the patio, where those coastal lands are such a stranger to winter.
Janell
Janell
I still do not like egg salad. Maybe I am like Sam I am.
Jane,
Yes — perhaps like the Sam-I-Am before he tried what he knew he did not like…
But you know, with all the wonderful and wide variety of foods made in our family, surely we weren’t alone in our dislike of egg salad. Otherwise, wouldn’t someone have made it every now and then? 🙂
Janell
thank you for remindimg me of egg salad
usually prepare in the summer – weary of soup and I may make some this weekend.
thank you for visiting me….
Ernestine,
It’s good to know your name. I’ve enjoyed visiting your site these last few days. And I look forward to many more. Spirit willing.
The slippery thing about recipes is how easily and often they fall into the cracks of my mind. I’ll forget a recipe for months — especially those usually reserved for a particular season, like egg salad is for you. I’ve intended to make a recipe of my aunt’s cooked apples since autumn began, but here it is February….
Posting recipes here does help me not to forget — plus there’s the added joy of sharing — like cooking for company without being in front of the stove.
Thanks for dropping by and letting me know.
Janell