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The Famous Club Sandwich
Toast slices of Five Roses bread a nice brown, and while hot spread with butter and put between the slices a lettuce leaf, some cold baked chicken cut in thin slices, a few chopped olives and pickles, some slices of hot crisp bacon, a layer of salad dressing, another lettuce leaf and the other slice of toast. Slices of tomatoes are sometimes added. Delightful for Sunday evening supper.
A two-slice club rather than the three-decker most restaurants now serve, and the assembly order in the original is worth following: lettuce against each piece of toast keeps the bread from going soft.
- Five Roses breadA promotional reference to the flour brand that published the book, not a special formula. Any firm-crumbed white sandwich loaf works; cut slices a generous 1/2 inch so the toast supports the filling.
- Butter the toast hotThe recipe is explicit about this, and butter melting into warm toast helps keep the dressing and tomato from soaking straight into the crumb.
- Salad dressingIn period cookbooks this could mean either a cooked boiled dressing thickened with egg and flour or a mayonnaise; the recipe does not say which. Mayonnaise is the obvious substitute; a boiled dressing gives a sharper tang.
- Cold baked chickenCold cooked bird, which in practice usually meant what was left from an earlier meal. Sliced breast or thigh, carved rather than shredded, keeps the layers even. Deli turkey works but is blander than intended.
- Olives and picklesChopped, not sliced, and drained well before they go in. Wet relish will soak through the bottom slice no matter how carefully the toast is buttered.
- BaconCook until fully crisp and blot it. Limp bacon in a two-slice club shreds out of the sandwich when it is cut.
- YieldThe instructions describe the assembly of a single sandwich, though the recipe gives no stated yield, no cutting instruction and no suggested accompaniments beyond calling it a Sunday evening supper dish.
The club sandwich is usually traced to American social clubs of the late nineteenth century, with early printed references in United States newspapers and hotel menus from about 1889 onward, though the origin story is not settled. By the time the Five Roses book carried it to Canadian kitchens it was a standard of light entertaining, and the recipe recommends it for Sunday evening supper. Note too that the recipe is advertising: Five Roses was a flour brand, and every mention of its bread in these pages is doing double duty.