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Windsor Sandwiches (Cream one-third cup butter)
Cream one-third cup butter, and add one-half cup each of finely chopped cold boiled ham and cold boiled chicken. Season with salt and paprika. Spread mixture between thin slices of bread.
A potted-meat spread of the kind Fannie Farmer's book turns out by the dozen: softened butter as the binder, cooked meat as the body, no mayonnaise in sight. A few notes make it behave.
- Chop finer than you thinkThe butter is the only thing holding this together, so the ham and chicken need to be nearly a paste. Pulse them in a food processor, or chop by hand until the pieces are the size of coarse breadcrumbs; anything larger tears the thin bread when you spread it.
- Butter temperature"Cream" here means beat the butter alone until pale and light, at proper room temperature, before adding anything. Cold butter will not take up the meat, and melted butter will separate as the filling chills.
- Proportions and yieldOne-third cup butter with a cup of meat total makes something over a cup of filling, enough for perhaps six to eight sandwiches on standard thin-sliced bread, or two to three dozen trimmed tea-sandwich fingers.
- The ham does the saltingBoiled ham of this era, and modern deli ham even more so, carries plenty of salt. Mix, taste, and only then decide whether the salt is needed; the paprika is for colour as much as heat.
- BreadThe recipe asks only for thin slices; a firm sandwich loaf cut thinner than usual works best, and if you trim crusts, do it after assembly. A day-old loaf cuts cleaner than fresh.
- Make ahead, then cutThe filling firms in the refrigerator and spreads best after twenty minutes back at room temperature. Assembled sandwiches keep an hour or two under a damp cloth; beyond that the bread goes leathery.
- Leftover meat, properly cooledThe recipe assumes cold boiled meat from a previous meal. Use meat that has been refrigerated promptly, and keep the finished sandwiches cold until serving, since nothing in the assembly is cooked.
Sandwiches named for Windsor belong to a broader fashion for attaching royal and aristocratic place names to genteel little dishes; the connection to the castle is decorative rather than documented. The technique is older than the name: creaming butter with pounded cooked meat is the same logic as the potted hams and potted fowl of English cookery, where a layer of butter both bound and preserved the meat. Sandwich chapters in cookbooks of the period, often traced to Fannie Farmer, reflect the moment when the sandwich moved from a portable meal to a formal one, made in quantity for receptions, card parties and afternoon teas, which is why so many such fillings are smooth, mild spreads cut into small shapes rather than anything you would carry in a pocket. Practically, the recipe is also a thrift measure, turning the remains of a boiled ham and a boiled fowl into something that could be served to guests.