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Meat Filling for Sandwiches
1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon flour 1 cup milk Yolks of 2 eggs 1 cup cold meat 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 1/2 teaspoon mustard Dash of red pepper 1 tablespoon lemon juice Melt the butter in a double boiler; stir in the flour; add the milk gradually; then the eggs, well beaten, and the seasoning. Cook until thick, stirring constantly to prevent lumps. Remove from the fire; cool and beat in the lemon juice; then add the meat, finely chopped or ground.
A thick egg-enriched white sauce used as a binder for chopped leftover meat. It is a spread, not a cooked dish, and the sauce does all the work.
- The garbled line"1/2 1/2 teaspoon mustard" appears to be a typesetting slip for 1/2 teaspoon. The mustard is most likely dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard from a jar.
- Red pepper"Dash of red pepper" in American books of this period means cayenne, not paprika or crushed chile flakes. A scant 1/8 teaspoon is a dash.
- Keep the yolks below a simmerKeep the heat gentle -- the double boiler is not decoration; if the water underneath boils hard the eggs can catch and the filling turn granular. Hold the water at a bare shiver and stir until the sauce coats a spoon heavily.
- Add the yolks off the heat firstThe instruction to add the beaten eggs straight to the hot milk sauce invites curdling. Whisk a ladle of the hot sauce into the yolks, then return the lot to the pan.
- Why the lemon goes in coldAcid can curdle a hot milk-and-egg sauce, so cooling before adding it, as the recipe directs, may well be deliberate rather than fussy.
- The meatAny cooked cold meat works: roast beef, ham, tongue, chicken. Grind or chop it very fine, since coarse pieces will tear soft sandwich bread. Salted meats like ham mean cutting back the half teaspoon of salt.
- Yield and keepingMakes roughly a pint. It is a fresh dairy-and-egg preparation with no preservative beyond the lemon juice; refrigerate and use within two days.
- ConsistencyIt thickens considerably as it chills. If it sets too stiff to spread, loosen with a spoonful of milk or cream rather than reheating.
Sandwich fillings of this kind belong to the era when the afternoon tea table, the picnic hamper and the school lunch pail all demanded something that would sit between two slices of bread without soaking through them. A thick bechamel bound with egg yolks was one common solution, and it had the additional virtue of stretching a small quantity of Sunday's roast across a large plate of Monday's sandwiches. Mustard, cayenne and lemon juice are doing the same job here that they do in a devilled preparation, sharpening meat that has lost its roasting-day savour.