Cut thin slices of fresh bread. Chop ham with the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs; add some made mustard and fresh butter and a dash of pepper. Mix all well and spread between the slices of bread. Serve on a folded napkin and garnish with sprigs of parsley.
June 25 — No. 25
English
A potted-ham spread rather than a stacked sandwich, and it lives or dies on the ratio: enough butter and yolk to bind, not so much that the ham stops tasting of ham. The original gives no quantities, so work by eye.
- Working proportionsFor 2 hard-boiled yolks, about 8 oz of cooked ham, 3 tablespoons soft butter and 2 teaspoons mustard gives a spreadable paste. That fills roughly 6 rounds of sandwiches, cut into quarters for a tea tray.
- "Made mustard"This means prepared mustard from the jar, as opposed to dry mustard powder. An English mustard is the period-correct choice and is considerably hotter than a Dijon; start with less than you think.
- "Fresh butter"This distinguished sweet butter from salted or older keeping butter. Use unsalted butter, well softened, and salt only at the end — cured ham brings plenty of its own.
- Chop, do not processA food processor turns ham into a pink paste with a pasty texture. Hand-chopping to a fine mince, then mashing the yolks in with a fork, keeps some grain to it.
- The leftover whitesThe recipe uses only the yolks, which is what makes the mixture rich and cohesive. Save the whites for a garnish or a salad rather than adding them here; they weep water into the spread.
- BreadThin slices means thin — a firm white sandwich loaf sliced about a quarter inch, crusts trimmed if serving for tea. Butter the bread as well as the filling if the sandwiches must sit.
- Holding and servingMade ahead, cover with a damp cloth and refrigerate; bring back to cool room temperature so the butter is not hard. The folded napkin is presentation, not preservation, though it does keep the bread from drying at the table.
Ham chopped with butter and mustard into a spread was standard British household economy for the end of a boiled or baked ham, and appears in Victorian and Edwardian books under names like potted ham and ham paste; the same mixture, pounded finer and sealed under clarified butter, was a larder staple before refrigeration. Its promotion to a daintily trimmed tea sandwich belongs to the later nineteenth century, when afternoon tea was a fixed social occasion and thin bread-and-butter with a savoury filling was its expected form. That a collection arranged by nation should file this under England rather than any of the country's cooked dishes may say something about how the sandwich itself was read abroad — as an English habit, novel enough to count as national character.