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Chicken-and-Nut Sandwiches
Chop fine the white meat of a cooked chicken and pound to a paste in a mortar. Season to taste with salt, paprica, oil and lemon juice and spread upon thin bits of bread. Spread other bits of bread, corresponding in shape to the first, with butter; press into the butter English walnuts, pecan nuts or almonds, blanched and sliced very thin. Press corresponding pieces together.
A two-part sandwich: a pounded chicken paste on one slice, sliced nuts set into butter on the other. The only real technique is getting the paste smooth enough to spread thinly.
- Mortar or processorA food processor does in thirty seconds what the mortar does in ten minutes, but it also throws the meat into a grainy pulp if overrun. Pulse the chopped breast with the oil and lemon juice a little at a time until it holds together as a spread.
- "Oil" means olive oilIn American cookbooks of this period, unqualified "oil" on a salad or sandwich page ordinarily meant olive (salad) oil. Start with about a tablespoon per cup of chopped chicken and add more until the paste spreads without tearing bread.
- PapricaAn older spelling of paprika. It would have been a sweet, unsmoked paprika used mainly for colour and mild warmth rather than the smoked Spanish kind. A pinch is enough to tint the paste pink.
- Cooked chickenAny plainly cooked fowl will do; leftover boiled or roast bird is the obvious source. Poached or roasted breast from a 3-4 lb chicken gives roughly a cup and a half of paste, enough for eight to ten small sandwiches.
- Butter as glueThe butter on the second slice is structural, not seasoning: it has to be soft enough to receive the nut slices and firm enough to hold them. Cream it first, spread it thick, then press the nuts in and chill briefly before assembling.
- Slice the nuts, do not chopBlanched almonds slice cleanly if soaked and still damp; walnuts and pecans are easiest sliced with a thin sharp knife along the natural halves. Chopped nuts fall out of the butter and make the sandwich impossible to bite through neatly.
- Bread and trimming"thin bits of bread" is not further specified; a close-grained white loaf a day old cuts thinnest and cleanest, and crusts can be trimmed after filling if you want them off. Cut the pairs to matching shapes before spreading, as the recipe does require, or the halves will not meet.
- HoldingWith oil, lemon and moist chicken these go soggy within an hour or two. Assemble close to serving and keep them covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator, not stacked loose.
This belongs to the turn-of-the-century fashion for the dainty sandwich, a genre associated less with lunch than with afternoon teas and card parties. Books of this type treat the sandwich as an exercise in cutting, matching and layering: shapes corresponding, fillings pounded to a paste in a mortar so they would spread on bread cut very thin. Pounded meat pastes themselves are much older, descending from the potted and pounded meats of English cookery, while the pairing with sliced nuts pressed into butter is typical of this period, by which time English walnuts, pecans and blanched almonds were widely available and turn up in sandwiches, salads and candies alike. Paprika, spelled "paprica" here, appears with some frequency in American books of the period, often where a cook wanted colour without the heat of cayenne.