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Meat Sandwiches
Any kind of cold meat, roast-beef or other roast meat, boiled beef tongue, ham, or potted meats are always in order for sandwiches. In using roast beef, cut very thin, carefully trim out any gristle or tendon, and cut the meat in small pieces.
Either roast beef or boiled ham should be exceedingly tender to use in large slices. Ham is better chopped. After spreading sufficient on the slice of bread press together, and if the slices are large, cut into convenient size. A club sandwich must necessarily be large, but others are less awkward to handle if cut in two.
Use Worcestershire sauce or tomato catsup with roast beef, pork, or lamb. Tongue and ham require mustard.
The potted ham, tongue, and chicken that are to be had in small cans make a very satisfactory sandwich. Use separately or take equal parts of each, and mix to a paste with mayonnaise or boiled salad dressing or tomato catsup. Spread on either white or brown bread.
This is a method rather than a fixed formula: a short guide to what belongs between two slices of bread when there is cold meat to use up. A few of its assumptions need translating.
- Potted meatThe "potted ham, tongue, and chicken" in small cans is what a modern shopper would find as deviled ham or canned meat spread. It is heavily salted, so taste before adding dressing and skip any extra salt.
- Boiled salad dressingA cooked dressing of egg, flour or cornstarch, vinegar, sugar and milk, thickened over heat rather than emulsified cold. It appears throughout cookbooks of this period alongside mayonnaise, as here; a good bottled mayonnaise or a mustardy aioli does the same job.
- Slicing the beefCold roast beef cuts far thinner and cleaner than warm, and a chilled joint carved across the grain gives a more tender sandwich. The instruction to trim gristle and tendon matters in a thin sandwich, where a single strand of tendon will pull the whole filling out.
- Chopped hamChopping ham, as directed, is not a compromise. Fibrous cured meat that would pull out of the sandwich in one strand becomes spreadable when chopped fine and bound with a little mustard or dressing.
- TongueBoiled beef tongue can still be found at some butchers and at Latin and Eastern European markets, though you may need to order it. It must be peeled after cooking and sliced thin across the grain; the recipe calls for mustard, and horseradish cream is another traditional partner.
- The club sandwichClub sandwiches of this era were commonly built on toast with chicken or turkey, bacon and lettuce, often as a triple-decker, though two-slice versions are also recorded. Either way it was a large sandwich, which is presumably why the book exempts it from being cut in two.
- Keeping themCold cooked meat and mayonnaise-bound spreads should not sit at room temperature more than a couple of hours; these were assumed to be eaten soon after making. Refrigerate until serving and pack with a cold source for a picnic.
- QuantityNo yield is given. As a working figure, 1 lb of trimmed cold meat fills six to eight generous sandwiches, and a single small can of potted meat spreads three or four.
Sandwich chapters expand markedly in household manuals of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and this entry shows why: the cold-meat sandwich was the practical answer to the carried midday meal, whether for a clerk, a schoolchild or a picnic, and to the afterlife of a roast in a kitchen with limited cold storage. The offhand recommendation of canned potted ham, tongue and chicken is a period marker in itself: small tins of spiced meat paste were among the earlier branded convenience foods to reach ordinary pantries, and this book treats them as unremarkable rather than as a shortcut needing apology. The condiment pairings set down as rules -- Worcestershire or catsup with beef, mustard with cured meats -- were already conventional and have proved durable.