Sandwiches
Grate one quarter pound cold him in a bowl, with one tablespoonful chopped pickle, one teaspoonful mustard, a little black pepper, six dessertspoonfuls butter; put in a bowl and stir quickly until a cream. Add the ham and seasoning, mix all together well. Have slices of light bread and spread the mixture on each side of each slice.
Cold grated tongue, instead of ham, is very nice spread on the inside of biscuit.
Sandwiches.
Mince ham and tongue together, and spread between buttered bread. Add a little French mustard to the mince if liked.--Mrs. R.
Two related sandwich spreads, the first essentially a potted or "deviled" ham butter. The transcription reads "cold him" for cold ham, and the instructions are shuffled: cream the butter with the pickle, mustard and pepper first, then work in the grated ham.
- DessertspoonfulA dessertspoon is about two teaspoons, so six of them is roughly 4 tablespoons (2 oz) of butter to 4 oz of ham. That gives a firm, spreadable paste; if it seems stiff, the butter was not soft enough to start.
- Grated hamGrating firm cold ham on a box grater is slow but produces a finer, fluffier texture than chopping. A few short pulses in a food processor with the butter does the same job, though it will be denser.
- Light breadIn Virginia usage "light bread" means a yeast-risen white loaf, as distinct from cornbread, soda biscuit or batter bread. A plain sandwich loaf, thinly sliced, is what is wanted.
- "Spread on each side of each slice"Read this as buttering the facing surfaces of both slices, not coating the outside of the bread. The spread is the filling and the butter both.
- French mustardA smooth, mild, vinegar-based prepared mustard of the Dijon type, not the dry English mustard powder that "one teaspoonful mustard" in the first paragraph most likely means. If you use powder, start with half a teaspoon and taste.
- TongueCooked beef tongue, cold and skinned, is sold at some butchers and Latin and Eastern European markets. It is mild and fine-grained; grated, it behaves almost exactly like the ham.
- Chopped pickleMost likely a sharp cucumber or mixed pickle in vinegar rather than a sweet one, though the recipe does not specify. Drain it well or the spread will weep.
- Yield and servingA quarter pound of ham with butter fills about six to eight sandwiches cut small. Both versions keep several days covered in the refrigerator and spread better after twenty minutes at room temperature.
Spreads of this kind sat at the point where thrift met elegance: they used up the dry end of a baked ham or a boiled tongue, yet turned it into something delicate enough for a tea table or a travelling basket. The technique is that of potted meat, an English practice of pounding cooked meat with butter and spice that ran back well before the nineteenth century and survived in the American South as "deviled ham" long after commercial tinned versions appeared. Tongue's prominence here is worth noting — in a household that cured its own pork and butchered its own beef, cold tongue was an ordinary sideboard meat rather than a curiosity. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and first published in 1879, gathered contributions from named and initialed Virginia housekeepers, which is why the second version arrives credited simply to Mrs. R. and repeats the title of the first.