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Club Sandwiches
(Steamer Priscilla style.) Have ready four triangular pieces of toasted bread spread with mayonnaise dressing; cover two of these with lettuce, lay thin slices of cold chicken (white meat) upon the lettuce, over this arrange slices of broiled breakfast bacon, then lettuce, and cover with the other triangles of toast spread with mayonnaise. Trim neatly, arrange on a plate, and garnish with heart leaves of lettuce dipped in mayonnaise.
A two-slice club rather than the three-decker most people expect, cut into triangles before assembly. The instructions are complete; what needs translating is the scale and the order of work.
- YieldFour triangles of toast make two sandwiches; two square slices, each cut on the diagonal, give the four triangles. Figure one sandwich per person as a light lunch.
- Cut the toast firstThe bread is toasted and cut into triangles before anything is spread. Building whole and cutting afterward pushes the filling out and tears the lettuce.
- Breakfast baconThis is thin-sliced bacon of the sort sold for frying or broiling, as distinct from thick slab bacon. Broiling means under direct heat or in a dry pan until crisp but still pliable; brittle bacon shatters when the sandwich is bitten.
- Cold chickenThe recipe assumes leftover roast or boiled fowl, sliced thin from the breast. Poached breast, chilled and sliced across the grain, gives the same effect. Warm chicken will wilt the lettuce and loosen the mayonnaise.
- Raw-egg mayonnaisePeriod mayonnaise was generally made fresh with raw yolks. Commercial mayonnaise is made with pasteurized egg and is the practical substitute; if making it from scratch, use pasteurized eggs and keep the sandwiches cold.
- Heart leavesThe pale inner leaves of a head of lettuce, dipped in mayonnaise and laid alongside as garnish. Romaine or butterhead hearts do this best; loose-leaf lettuce is too floppy to stand on the plate.
- No tomatoThe tomato that defines the modern club is absent here, as it is in a number of turn-of-the-century versions. This one is chicken, bacon, lettuce and mayonnaise only.
Janet McKenzie Hill's collection of salads, sandwiches and chafing-dish cookery belongs to the moment when American hostesses were expected to produce a light, cold, elegant meal without a kitchen brigade, and the sandwich moved from picnic fare to something arranged and garnished on a plate. The club sandwich itself is generally traced to American club houses and resort dining rooms of the 1890s, though no single origin is documented; competing claims attach to Saratoga Springs and to various gentlemen's clubs, and the name may refer simply to the places it was served. The parenthetical "Steamer Priscilla style" points to the Priscilla, a Fall River Line overnight steamer running between New York and New England, known for the luxury of its saloons.