Club Sandwich
2 slices bread. 2 leaves lettuce. 2 slices chicken breast 2 slices bacon Mayonnaise dressing Toast the bread to a delicate brown and fry the bacon crisp. On one slice of toast place lettuce leaves, covering them with Mayonnaise; then lay on the pieces of chicken and the bacon; cover again with Mayonnaise; put on the second slice of toast; press down and cut through the sandwich diagonally. Work as quickly as possible so that the toast and bacon may be hot when served.
A two-slice club, written before the three-decker version became standard. The ingredient list is incomplete in the usual manner of loose-leaf books: bread and lettuce appear only in the method.
- What you actually needTwo slices of bread, lettuce leaves, two slices of cooked chicken breast, two slices of bacon and mayonnaise. Makes one sandwich.
- The hinge is heatThe instruction to work quickly is the whole recipe. Toast, bacon and chicken should all be hot and the mayonnaise added at the last moment, or it thins and slides out under the pressing.
- Chicken breastCold sliced cooked fowl, plausibly left from a roast or boiled bird. Poached or roasted breast sliced across the grain does the same job; deli slices will not, being too wet.
- Mayonnaise dressingIn this period the term meant a dressing made at home, generally an egg emulsion, though "mayonnaise dressing" also covered thinned and cooked versions. If you use jarred, a squeeze of lemon brings it closer.
- Two slices, not threeNo third slice of toast and no tomato here. Both became near-universal later; this is the earlier form.
- Pressing and cuttingPress firmly before cutting or the diagonal slice drags the filling out. A serrated knife and one long stroke, not sawing.
The club sandwich appears in American cookbooks from the 1890s onward and is generally traced to the men's social clubs and resort clubhouses of the northeastern United States, where a plate of toast, cold fowl and bacon could be assembled at any hour without troubling the kitchen for a full order. The name is usually explained that way, though no single club's claim is documented beyond dispute. What is clear from printed versions is how quickly it changed: early ones like this are two slices of toast, while the three-decker with tomato that most people now picture becomes standard only in the following decades. Its presence in a household loose-leaf book shows the dish moving out of the club dining room and into domestic use.