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Ham-and-Egg Sandwiches
Chop the ham and pound smooth in a mortar; pass the yolks of hard-boiled eggs through a sieve; mix the yolks with an equal amount of mayonnaise dressing. Butter one piece of bread lightly and spread with the ham, spread the other piece with the egg and dressing, and press the two together.
A straightforward two-spread sandwich from the era when a mortar did the work of a food processor. The only real decisions are the texture of the ham and the moisture of the yolk paste.
- Ham, pounded or processedThe mortar produces a smooth, slightly fibrous paste rather than a mince. A food processor gets you there in about 30 seconds; pulse rather than run it, or the fat smears and the filling turns greasy. Use a cooked, cured ham, boiled or baked, not a raw country ham.
- Only the yolksHard-boiled yolks pushed through a sieve give a dry, fine crumb that takes up dressing evenly. The recipe gives no reason for using the yolks alone and says nothing about the whites; chop them into a salad rather than throwing them out.
- Equal parts yolk and mayonnaiseBy volume this is very rich and quite loose. Start with about three-quarters mayonnaise to one part sieved yolk and add more dressing only if the paste will not spread; a wetter mix soaks the bread within the hour.
- Homemade mayonnaise and raw egg'Mayonnaise dressing' here presumably means one of the uncooked yolk-and-oil dressings given elsewhere in the book. If you make your own, use pasteurized eggs and keep the finished sandwiches refrigerated, particularly if they are being packed for a picnic or a tea table.
- Butter one side onlyThe recipe butters one slice lightly, under the ham, and leaves the other bare; it does not say why, though the egg side already carries fat from the mayonnaise.
- BreadA close-grained white sandwich loaf, cut thin, was the usual choice of the period. Trim the crusts and cut into fingers or triangles if you are serving these as tea sandwiches.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. As a rough guide, about a cup of ham paste and a half cup of egg mixture fills roughly six full sandwiches, or two dozen trimmed tea fingers. Both spreads keep a day covered in the refrigerator; assemble close to serving.
Janet McKenzie Hill's Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties appeared at the end of the 1890s, when the sandwich in America was shifting from a tavern item to a genteel one, cut small and served at teas, receptions and luncheons. That shift may explain the fussiness here: the ham is not sliced but pounded to a paste in a mortar, and the egg is sieved, so the filling will spread thinly and cut cleanly without gaping -- handling that recalls the pounded potted meats of English cookery. Hill founded and edited the Boston Cooking School Magazine and wrote from within the same New England domestic-science movement as Fannie Farmer, which shows in the assumption that a household kitchen owns a mortar and a fine sieve.