Some people would not from their homes be used to putting lettuce on the sandwich, between the butter and the topping.
But the lettuce has its use. It's not just to be fancy or complicated.
A solid fact : bread is usually porose, lettuce has a hard surface.
Yesterday, I made double sandwiches from Harry's bread, a French brand of sandwich bread. As a topping, I used cucumber salad and goat cheese. For the goat cheese, no problem. But for the cucumber salad, I was partly thankful I had a second bread on top, and partly regretting I had no lettuce below. My fingers got moist.
So, to serve the same recipe in a restaurant, one would:
- put a lettuce leaf below the cucumber salad so it doesn't ooze through the bread
- put spread butter below the leaf, so it stays in place.
If you think the butter is too hard, there are two ways around that:
- dip the knife in boiling water a few seconds before putting it to the butter
- or use Bregott or a similar mixture.*
Even if the topping is not liquid, it can be smeary, like some French goose liver** pâté, and on that occasion, I was happy to have, instead of bread above it, leaves of lettuce above it./HGL
*
A Spread Like Butter, that's Not Margarine?
** In fact, it was something even stickier, if you don't have lettuce or bread on the top - mousse de canard.
