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Hot Ham Sandwiches
Put 1 pound cooked ham through food chopper. Add 4 tablespoons creamed butter, 1 teaspoon mustard and 1 teaspoon paprika, and mix well. Cut Bread in sixteen 1/4 inch slices, spread eight slices bread with the ham mixture, cover with remaining bread and press slices firmly together. Cut each sandwich in three strips. Beat 2 eggs slightly and add 2 cups milk. Dip sandwiches, one at a time, in this mixture, and saute in butter, cooking on one side until browned, and then turning and browning the other side. Serve very hot. Other meat, or marmalade or jam may be used in sandwiches in place of ham.
A fried sandwich in the Monte Cristo family: potted ham between thin bread, dipped in custard and browned in butter. Two things decide whether it works — how briefly the sandwich meets the milk, and how firmly it is pressed together first.
- The dip is the hingeThe batter is thin (2 eggs to 2 cups milk), so a sandwich left in it more than a second or two per side will collapse in the pan. Dip, let the excess run off, and get it into the butter immediately. Chilling the assembled sandwiches for 20 minutes before dipping helps them hold.
- Far more batter than neededTwo cups of milk is generous for eight thin sandwiches; you will likely have a good deal left over. Halve it unless you have another use for it, since milk that has had raw egg and bread in it cannot be reclaimed.
- "Creamed butter"Butter beaten soft and smooth on its own — no cream involved. Leave it at room temperature and work it with a spoon before mixing in the ham, or the filling will not spread on thin slices.
- MustardIn American books of this period unqualified "mustard" usually means dry mustard powder, though prepared mustard cannot be ruled out. A teaspoon of powder to a pound of ham is mild; prepared mustard can be substituted but adds moisture, so use slightly less.
- Food chopperA hand-cranked grinder. A food processor pulsed in short bursts gives the same coarse mince; run it too long and the ham turns to paste and weeps fat in the pan.
- BreadSixteen quarter-inch slices means a close-crumbed sandwich loaf cut thinner than most bought bread. A firm white pullman loaf, sliced yourself, holds the custard; airy modern sandwich bread turns to mush.
- The panMedium heat and enough butter to keep the surface moving. Butter alone browns fast at higher heat — clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, buys you margin. Wipe the pan between batches.
- Yield and servingEight sandwiches cut in three gives 24 strips, enough for six to eight at a light luncheon. They must go out hot; hold finished strips uncovered on a rack in a 200F oven, not stacked, or the crust softens.
- The jam variationSweet fillings leak more than ham does. Spread them thin, leave a clear quarter-inch border, and press the edges hard.
The dish is the same idea as the fried filled sandwich later known in America as the Monte Cristo, and a cousin of the croque-monsieur: a filled sandwich enriched by frying, with the egg-and-milk dip doing the work that a cheese sauce does elsewhere. Ground ham bound with butter was a standard use for the tail end of a boiled or baked ham, and it appears in period books as "deviled" or "potted" ham, often seasoned with mustard and paprika. The closing note that marmalade or jam may replace the meat suggests the sweet-savoury fried sandwich was not felt to be an oddity.