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Club Sandwich with Sweetbreads
When brought form market soak 1 pair sweetbreads 1 hour in Water with 1 tablespoon vinegar. Parboil 20 minutes in 1 cup mil. Cool in cold water, drain and cut in slice. On serving plate for each person place 1slice toast spread to the edges with Butter worked until creamy. Cut in two diagonally and cover with 1 or 2 washed and dried Lettuce leaves, and with Mayonnaise dressing. On lettuce place a layer of Sweetbread slices, cover with Slice of cucumber which have been dipped in Mayonnaise dressing and with 2 slices bacon free from rind, cooked until crisp. Cover with 1 slice buttered toast, cut in two diagonally. Place a Small lettuce leaf on the toast and fill with Mayonnaise dressing. Sprinkle with Paprika. Place on side of plate Sweet pickled cucumber rings or Olives, plain or stuffed.
PICKLED RIPE CUCUMBER RINGS Pare rind from 2 quarts ripe cucumbers, cut in slice crosswise, with then stamp out centers, making rings. Cover with Cold water, add 1 teaspoon soda and let stand over nigh. Next morning drain, cover with cold water in which 2 tablespoon alum have been dissolved and boil 10 minutes. Strain, cover again with cold water, add 1tablespoon ginger, boil 15 minutes. Drain , measure water and discard. Measure as much vinegar as there was water and to each quart vinegar add 3 pound granulated sugar 1/4 cup whole cloves and 1/4 cup stick cinnamon. Add fruit and boil until clear. Watermelon rind, cut in strips, may be sued instead of cucumber. APRICOTS WITH CREAM AND NUT BRITTLE Drain 1 can apricots, cook syrup 10 minutes, add fruit and cook 3 to 5 minute, or until tender. Cool and pour into serving dish . Sprinkle with one-half the nut brittle. Beat 1/2 cup cream until stiff, add slowly 1/4 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Few grains salt and half remaining brittle. Pile cream on the apricots, sprinkle with remaining brittle and serve as cold as possible . Other canned fruit orange sections may be used instead of apricots.
NUT BRITTLE Put 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water in saucepan and boil quickly until syrup is a golden brown. Remove from fire, adds 2/3 cup chopped nut meats and turn into lightly greased pan. Cool and pound until broken into very small pieces.
GINGER PUFFS Beat 1 egg until light, add 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup molasses and 1/4 cup shortening melted in 1/2 cup warm water. Add 2 cups pastry flour sifted with 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon ginger 1 teaspoon soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Combine mixtures and bake in small greased tins for 12 to 15 minutes at 4 degree F. Frost if desired with Cheese Frosting.
The page is a full luncheon menu, and the text has been transcribed with the printer's errors intact — "1 cup mil" for milk, "4 degree F" for the oven. A few conversions and one important note on the sweetbreads are worth having before you start.
- Buying sweetbreadsA "pair" is conventionally the two glands from a single animal; a calf's pair is under a pound and a half, and the recipe gives no yield. They are highly perishable; use them the day you get them, or the day after at the latest, and ask a butcher to order them rather than hoping to find them in a case.
- The hinge: soak, then peelThe vinegar soak draws blood out and firms the flesh, and helps keep the finished slices pale rather than grey. After parboiling and chilling, slip off the outer membrane and any gristle before slicing, which the original assumes you know to do; the slices will otherwise curl and pull apart.
- Parboil in milkTwenty minutes in a cup of milk at a bare simmer is right for calf sweetbreads and leaves them cooked through — they are not being served rare. Keep the heat low, since milk scorches, and press the cooled lobes lightly under a plate for an hour if you want slices that hold together on the sandwich.
- Ginger puffs oven"4 degree F" is garbled; a digit or more has dropped out, most likely from 400°F. Bake in a moderate oven for the 12 to 15 minutes given, watching that the sugar and molasses do not darken at the edges before the centres set.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer and lower in protein than all-purpose. Substitute all-purpose measured by weight at about 4 oz per cup and hold back a tablespoon or two, or use the common swap of all-purpose with a spoonful replaced by cornstarch.
- Alum and soda in the picklesBoth are period firming agents for cucumber rings. Potassium alum is still sold as a pickling ingredient but is optional and easily overdone; the soda soak softens the peel and must be rinsed off thoroughly or the syrup tastes soapy. Three pounds of sugar per quart of vinegar is a very heavy sweet-pickle syrup by modern taste.
- Storing the picklesNo sealing or processing is described, so treat the finished rings as a refrigerator pickle: cool, cover, keep cold and use within a few weeks. If you want shelf-stable jars, follow a current tested boiling-water-bath procedure.
- Nut brittleThis is a plain boiled caramel rather than a modern baking-soda brittle — sugar and water boiled to golden brown, nuts stirred in, poured out and pounded. Pull it off the heat the moment the colour turns, since it darkens in the pan, and pound it in a bag or under a towel.
- Serving the menuQuantities are given per person for the sandwich; no yields are given for the apricots or the ginger puffs. "Cheese Frosting" reads as a cross-reference to another recipe in the book.
The three-decker club sandwich appears in American print by the late 1880s and 1890s, and its name is generally traced to men's clubs rather than to any single inventor. What marks this version as a period piece is the filling: sweetbreads were a genteel luxury on early twentieth-century luncheon cards, the sort of dish a hostess might set before ladies at midday. The menu around it follows the standard shape of such books — a composed sandwich, a sharp sweet pickle to cut the mayonnaise and bacon, canned fruit dressed with whipped cream, and a small spiced cake — an entire meal built so that most of it could be finished before the guests arrived.