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Eighth Day: Ellen
Grace went off in high glee, and Mrs. King turned to Jessie. "Here is a good little girl who can chop the ham for the sandwiches if Ellen will cut some slices for her. Of course we can't make them before to-morrow morning, but the ham can be chopped and shut up tight in a cold place, and it will be quite as good. The bread that is just going in to bake will be exactly right to cut up by that time." "I never heard before of chopping ham that was to go in sandwiches," observed Ellen; "I always saw the slices just put in whole." "And did you ever see any one try to bite through a good thick piece of ham and two slices of bread, Ellen?" said Mrs. King. "I have, and dreadful work they made of it. Some people are so particular that they grate the ham, but I think it is just as good chopped up into rather small pieces; not too fine, Jessie, but about a quarter of a mouthful."
This is instruction embedded in a story rather than a formal recipe, and the whole point is the one technique: ham for sandwiches is chopped, not laid in whole slices. Everything else has to be inferred.
- The hinge: chop, don't sliceA whole slice of ham between two slices of bread tears out in one piece when bitten. Chopping to what Mrs. King calls "about a quarter of a mouthful" — and she is explicit that it should not be too fine — lets each bite shear cleanly. Grating is mentioned as the option of people who are "so particular"; Mrs. King thinks chopped is just as good.
- "A cold place"In a house of this period that meant a cellar, larder or ice chest. Cooked ham chopped today should go into a covered container in the refrigerator at 40F or below and be used the next day, as the text intends; the increased cut surface means it will dry and sour faster than a whole piece.
- The ham itselfThe text says only that slices are cut for Jessie to chop, so this is a cooked ham carved at home rather than pre-sliced. A modern equivalent is thick-cut cooked ham off the bone rather than thin deli slices, which tend to shred rather than chop.
- Bread timingThe bread "just going in to bake" is meant to be cut the following morning, when Mrs. King says it will be "exactly right". Very fresh bread compresses and tears under the knife; a cooled, day-old loaf slices thin and holds together.
- What is missingNo butter, mustard or binder is specified here. Chopped ham without any fat or moisture will fall out of the sandwich; butter spread to the edges of both slices is the usual fix and also keeps the bread from going damp.
- QuantityNone is given anywhere in the passage. As a working figure, about 4 oz of chopped ham fills three rounds of sandwiches cut into quarters.
Six Little Cooks belongs to a nineteenth-century genre that taught girls cookery through narrative — a group of children work through a season of lessons under an adult, and the instruction arrives as dialogue rather than as numbered steps. That format explains why there are no weights here: the reader is meant to be watching over Jessie's shoulder, not measuring. The sandwiches themselves are picnic and travelling food, a form Anglo-American households are often said to have leaned on heavily in this period. The attention to chopping fits a wider preoccupation of the period: finely grated or minced ham, sometimes pounded to a paste with butter, was treated as the respectable treatment of the meat.