Sandwiches-Forty

A compact church-supper filling, written in the shorthand that community cookbooks assumed everyone could read. The last two lines are a second, simpler filling rather than additions to the first.

• The abbreviationsC is a cup, T a tablespoon, t a teaspoon. So: 1½ cups ground ham, 3 tablespoons chopped pickle, ⅔ cup dressing.
• "13 t salt"Evidently a typesetting slip; the likeliest reading is 1/3 teaspoon, though the original figure cannot be recovered with certainty. Given that ham, pickles and commercial dressing are all salty, taste before adding any at all.
• Salad dressingIn older American cookbooks this generally means a cooked boiled dressing — egg yolks, vinegar, a little flour and butter — or a bottled equivalent. Mayonnaise works; so does half mayonnaise and half sour cream if you want the tang of the older cooked style.
• Ground fineHam of this kind would most likely have gone through a hand food chopper, which shreds rather than purees. A few pulses in a food processor, or a coarse chop by hand, gives the right texture; run it too long and the filling turns to paste.
• Two fillings, not oneThe final two lines — 1 cup deviled ham, 1/2 cup chopped nuts — read as a separate spread. Bind it with a spoonful of the same dressing and it spreads cleanly. Deviled ham may have been either the tinned product or a home-seasoned potted ham; tinned deviled ham is still sold and will do.
• Why butter the breadThe butter is a moisture barrier between a wet filling and soft bread. It matters if the sandwiches are made an hour or two ahead, as they were for a supper.
• Yield and holdingThe ham and egg mixture makes roughly 3 cups, enough for about 10–12 sandwiches on standard slices, or about double that cut into quarters for a tea plate. Being egg- and dressing-based, it should be refrigerated and kept cold until served.