Home › Sandwiches And Canapes › Club Sandwiches
Club Sandwiches
Arrange on slices of bread thin slices of cooked bacon; cover with slices of cold roast chicken, and cover chicken with Mayonnaise Dressing. Cover with slices of bread.
A three-line recipe that assumes you already have cold roast chicken, cooked bacon and a bowl of mayonnaise in the larder. The details that matter are structural.
- Toast the breadFannie Farmer says only "slices of bread." Untoasted bread softens quickly under mayonnaise and bacon fat, so you may prefer to toast it lightly and let it cool before building; mayonnaise can separate against hot bread.
- The chicken"Cold roast chicken" suggests leftovers from a roasted bird, sliced rather than shredded. Slices hold the sandwich together; pulled meat slides out. Poached breast works, but the recipe describes roast meat.
- Bacon of the periodBacon of this era was dry- or brine-cured rather than pumped like much modern supermarket bacon. Cook it until crisp and drain it well; wet bacon soaks the bread from below.
- Mayonnaise DressingThe cross-reference is to the book's own recipe, an uncooked emulsion of raw egg yolk, oil, vinegar or lemon and mustard. If you make it from scratch and are serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs; jarred mayonnaise is a legitimate substitute here.
- Two slices, not threeThis is the two-slice version. The three-decker club with a middle slice of bread, lettuce and tomato became standard later; Farmer's is the older and plainer form.
- Assembly orderBacon goes against the bottom slice, then chicken, then mayonnaise, then the top slice. Keeping the dressing off the bottom slice helps the sandwich survive being cut and carried.
- Yield and servingAssume one sandwich per person as a light lunch or supper dish. Cut in half on the diagonal, press gently, and serve within the hour — this does not hold well.
The club sandwich appears in American cookbooks from the 1890s onward, and its name is generally traced to the men's social clubs and gambling clubs of the northeastern United States, where a cold sandwich could be assembled late at night from whatever the kitchen had roasted that day. It also appears in Fannie Farmer's book, among the sandwich chapter's offerings. The chapter as a whole reflects a period when sandwiches were newly fashionable for luncheons, teas and card parties. The later three-decker version, with lettuce, tomato and a third slice of bread, largely displaced this simpler arrangement over the following few decades.