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Italian Sandwich Filling
1/2 pound dried beef 2 cups canned tomatoes 1/4 pound cheese shake of pepper Put the beef and cheese together through the meat grinder, add tomatoes and pepper and cook slowly until thick. Chill and spread on sandwiches with lettuce leaf.
A thick, savory spread cooked down on the stovetop, in the same family as the chipped-beef mixtures that filled sandwiches at church suppers and card parties. Two things decide whether it works: how far you reduce it, and how much salt the beef brings.
- Cook it further than you thinkThis is the hinge. The mixture must reduce until a spoon dragged through the pan leaves a track that does not fill in, or it will soak the bread. Figure 25-40 minutes over low heat, stirring often once it thickens, since the cheese will catch on the bottom.
- Dried beefThis is salt-cured pressed beef, sold in jars or thin packets as chipped or dried beef. It is aggressively salty; rinse it in hot water and pat dry before grinding if you want any control over the seasoning. No additional salt is called for, and none is wanted.
- The cheeseAn unspecified quarter pound in a book of this vintage was most likely a firm yellow American or longhorn-style cheese rather than a fresh Italian cheese, though the recipe does not say. Use about 1 cup grated of a mild cheddar or a block-style American; it melts smoothly and will not turn stringy.
- Grinder or notA food processor does the same work in a few pulses, but stop while the beef is still in visible shreds. Fully pureed, the filling turns pasty. Hand-chopping the beef and grating the cheese gives the best texture.
- Canned tomatoesTwo cups is roughly one 15-ounce can plus a splash. Drain off some of the packing liquid at the start to shorten the cooking time, and break up whole tomatoes with a spoon or your hands.
- Why it is called ItalianThe name most likely refers to the tomato, which often stood in for Italian cooking in American cookbooks of this era, though the book does not explain it. Nothing else about the mixture is Italian, so treat suggestions of oregano or basil as your own addition rather than a restoration.
- Yield and keepingExpect about 2 cups of filling, enough for 10 to 12 sandwiches. It must be thoroughly chilled before spreading, and will keep three or four days covered in the refrigerator; it also serves well warm over toast.
Dried beef was one of the great convenience proteins of the American pantry between the wars: shelf-stable, already cured, and cheap enough to stretch across a crowd. Creamed chipped beef on toast was its most famous use, but cookbooks of the 1920s and 1930s ran through many variations, grinding it with cheese, pickles, olives or eggs into spreads for the sandwich loaf. Naming a tomato-based mixture "Italian" was a common shorthand of the period, when a single ingredient was often enough to stand in for a whole cuisine on a printed menu.