Making the PBC sandwich from Heinz

PBC Sandwich from Heinz.

The PBC sandwich from Heinz does not incorporate peanut butter and cheese as you might expect (though we approve of that combination). It’s peanut butter, bacon and chili sauce from a recipe that appeared in the 1933 Heinz Salad Cookbook. We ran across it and had to give it a try because we love peanut butter.

Here’s the 1933 recipe for PBC Sandwich from Heinz.

Method is pretty straightforward with a few quirks. Take 2 slices of bread and toast on one side only. (We did this by inserting two slices together in the wider bagel slot of our upright toaster.) Spread untoasted side of one slice with peanut butter, then slather on some Heinz Chili Sauce. Now add strips of bacon, trimmed to fit the bread, and broil at a medium setting till the bacon crisps at the edges and sizzles.

Our gherkins strategy!

Thus far the recipe is as described in an episode of Sandwiches of History, a Youtube channel we will probably revisit at some point. The host tries it as an open face sandwich and proclaims it okay, then adds some hot sauce and pepper and a second piece of bread and likes it better. What is never discussed is the addition of “sliced gherkins” in the original recipe which gave us pause. Heinz doesn’t directly tell us to put the pickles on the sandwich but rather to “serve with”. But who slices up gherkins? These sweet pickles are pretty small to begin with and I expect 100% of snackers eat them whole. Maybe gherkins were the size of cantaloupes in 1933?

We ended up slicing the gherkins lengthwise and adding them to the sandwich, then closing up the assembly and slicing to serve. It was fine, nothing not to like. Next time we’d probably broil both pieces of bread with the bacon on the plain side to capture more of the bacon grease. And the gherkins add mostly a sweet/sour element which could be obtained more economically with pickle relish. Also, full disclosure, we did not use Heinz Chili Sauce which is just very expensive ketchup with some sweet heat added but rather a house brand which served our purposes just fine. And Heinz no longer makes peanut butter so we substituted the magnificent Trader Joe’s product.