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Other Meat Fillings
Equal parts chicken and ham, finely minced, and seasoned with curry powder.
One cup cold roast chicken, 3 olives, 1 pickle, 1 tablespoon capers. Mince fine and mix with mayonnaise.
Equal parts cold roast turkey, cold roast beef, boiled ham and tongue. Season with chopped pickles and mix with mayonnaise.
Cold roast veal, chopped fine with hard-boiled eggs. Season with catsup.
Thin slices roast veal covered with chopped pickles.
Cold roast chicken and ¼ the quantity of blanched almonds, chopped fine and minced to a paste with cream.
Six filling formulas rather than one recipe, all built on the same logic: cold cooked meat minced fine, a sharp or salty accent, and enough fat to bind. Quantities are left to the cook in five of the six, so work by taste and texture.
- Bind first, season secondThe hinge in all of these is texture. Mince the meat to a coarse paste, then add mayonnaise or cream a spoonful at a time until it just holds together and spreads without tearing the bread. Too much and it soaks through; too little and the sandwich crumbles.
- Proportions where none are givenFor the "equal parts" mixtures, about 1 cup total minced meat with 3 to 4 tablespoons mayonnaise fills four sandwiches. The chicken-and-almond paste wants roughly 1 cup chicken to a scant ¼ cup blanched almonds and 2 tablespoons cream.
- TongueCooked beef tongue was a standard cold cut in this period and now usually has to be asked for at a butcher. Corned beef or a good pastrami stands in for its salt and firmness without pretending to be the same thing.
- Blanching almondsStore-bought blanched almonds are fine. To do it yourself, cover with boiling water for a minute and slip the skins off; dry them well before chopping, or the paste turns gluey.
- Catsup was thinner thenCatsup -- Many catsups of this period were looser and more vinegary than the sweet modern product. Use a light hand with the current bottle or the veal-and-egg filling goes sweet.
- Curry powderBloom it briefly in a little melted butter and cool it before mixing into the chicken and ham. Raw curry powder stirred straight into mayonnaise tastes dusty.
- Keeping and servingThese are mayonnaise-bound minced meats and should be made the day they are eaten, kept refrigerated, and held out of a warm room. Trim the crusts and cut in fingers or triangles.
Sandwich chapters like this one exist because of the afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon, occasions that called for a great deal of food in very small pieces and no knives at the table. They also exist because of the roast: a household that put a whole turkey, a ham and a joint of beef on the Sunday table had cold meat to account for on Monday, and mincing it with pickles and mayonnaise was a respectable way to do so. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell flour, and its recipes were gathered from Canadian housewives, which accounts for the format here — a run of remembered combinations, given as ratios rather than measured formulas, the way a cook would pass one along to a neighbour.