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Sandwiches from Rolls (See Recipes for Rolls)
Unusually good picnic sandwiches can be made by baking a pan of little round rolls, cutting the tops neatly off when they are cold, scooping out some of the crumb, and filling them with chicken chopped and reduced to a stiff paste with cream. They must be seasoned highly with salt and black pepper. Other fillings, of course, may be used.
A filled-roll sandwich rather than a sliced one, meant to survive a basket. The method is simple; almost everything depends on the filling being stiff enough not to weep into the bread.
- Start with the roll recipeThe title sends you back to the book's own roll recipes; any small round enriched roll will do. Bake them as that recipe directs, and well browned, so the crust holds its shape after hollowing.
- Cool completely before cuttingThe instruction to cut when cold is not optional. Warm crumb tears and compresses instead of lifting out cleanly, and steam trapped under the lid will make the shell soggy.
- Leave a wallScoop with a small spoon or your fingers and leave a good layer of crumb all round. If the interior feels damp, dry the hollowed shells for a few minutes in a low oven.
- "Stiff paste with cream" means stiffChop cooked chicken very fine, or pulse it briefly in a processor, and add cream a spoonful at a time only until the mixture holds together and mounds on the spoon. A loose, mayonnaise-like salad will soak into the shell.
- Season harder than seems rightBread mutes salt considerably, and these are eaten at room temperature or cooler, which mutes it again. The direction to season highly is meant literally; taste the filling and then salt it once more.
- Keep the picnic basket coldChicken bound with cream is a perishable filling. Assemble it cold, pack with ice packs, and eat within a couple of hours in warm weather.
- Other fillingsAnything that can be worked to a paste behaves the same way: ham with mustard butter, hard-boiled egg mashed with butter rather than mayonnaise, or a chopped cheese and nut mixture.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; judge the filling by the number of rolls you have hollowed. Replace the cut tops as lids and wrap each roll individually.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal to promote its Five Roses flour, and like other milling-company books it leans heavily on bread, rolls and pastry, with cross-references sending the cook back to the yeast recipes. This entry belongs to the early twentieth-century sandwich vogue, when the sandwich moved out of the tavern and into the ladies' luncheon, the church social and the picnic hamper, and cookbooks began devoting whole chapters to "dainty" versions, ribboned, rolled, cut into shapes or, as here, built into a hollowed roll. The filled-roll idea turns up in other books of the period as well; an intact crust travels better than two slices of buttered bread. The instruction to season highly reflects the same practical logic as the sturdy construction: food eaten cold, out of doors, needs more salt than food eaten hot at table.