Sandwich
See how a man becomes immortal by his good taste! Who would have remembered the Earl of Sandwich if he had not brought the sandwich into vogue in the last century? The gratitude of mankind has for ever, and all over the habitable globe, honoured it with his name. Nothing can be more simple. But the sandwich is capable of infinite variety, and we ought not to make it monotonous by confining it to beef and ham. It may be made of fowl, game, fish, and eggs, not forgetting plovers' Sauce eggs. How is it that these more delicate varieties of the sandwich are so seldom to be seen at balls and suppers among those cold collations where everything else is choice and even curious? Why not vary the sandwich, too, by using crust of bread, toast, or brown bread? An admirable addition to the sandwich in summer is mustard and cress, or a lettuce finely shred; in winter some thin slices of pickled gherkin. Francatelli deserves great credit for inventing what he calls the Badminton sandwich, which is made as follows: - Cut slices of toast, and immediately on taking them from the fire split them with a sharp knife. Spread the inner sides with anchovy butter, and put fillets of anchovy between. This is in fact a sort of anchovy toast to be eaten cold.
The bulk of this entry is opinion, but the closing Badminton sandwich is a working recipe, and the hinge is timing: the toast must be split while it is still hot from the fire, or the two halves will not part cleanly.
- Splitting hot toastToast thick slices, then immediately run a thin sharp knife through the soft interior to separate the crisp top and bottom. Once the toast has cooled the crumb sets and is apt to tear rather than split, which is why the original insists on doing it straight from the fire.
- Anchovy butterPound about 6 salt-packed or oil-packed anchovy fillets into 4 oz softened butter, or use anchovy paste to taste; the recipe gives no proportions. Salt-packed anchovies of the kind then usual can be considerably saltier than modern oil-packed fillets, so season by tasting rather than by count.
- Fillets of anchovyWhole salted anchovies want rinsing and filleting; oil-packed fillets can go straight in. Either way pat them dry so the toast does not go soft.
- Eaten coldThe point of the dish, as the text says, is anchovy toast served cold, which is why it worked on a supper table. Assemble not more than an hour or two ahead and keep it covered.
- Plovers' eggsWild plover eggs were a fashionable Victorian delicacy and are now illegal to take in Britain and most of Europe. Quail eggs, hard-boiled and halved, fill the same role.
- Mustard and cressThis is the traditional British punnet of white mustard and garden cress sown together, sold sprouted. Any mild peppery sprout or shredded watercress substitutes.
- Brown breadIn this period brown bread means a wholemeal or partly wholemeal loaf, not a molasses bread. Choose a close-crumbed sandwich loaf so it slices thin.
- YieldEach slice of toast makes one sandwich; reckon two or three per person for a cold collation, cut into fingers.
Kettner's repeats the standard story, which is traditional rather than documented: John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, is generally credited with popularising bread-enclosed meat in mid-eighteenth-century London, whether at the card table or the desk depending on who tells it. The Badminton sandwich is credited here to Charles Elmé Francatelli, the Italian-English chef who trained under Carême, cooked briefly for Queen Victoria, and published widely read cookery books in the 1840s and 1850s; the name points to Badminton House, seat of the Dukes of Beaufort, in the manner of the period's habit of naming dishes after great houses. The complaint that sandwiches at balls never went beyond beef and ham is itself a useful piece of evidence about what was actually being served at Victorian cold suppers, and anchovy in butter or paste form was one of the era's most reliable savoury flavourings, appearing on toast, in sauces and under game at almost every level of the table.