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Mutton Sandwiches
Chop cold cooked mutton very fine; to each pint add one teaspoon of salt; one tablespoon of capers; one teaspoon of chopped mint; one dash of pepper and one tablespoon of lemon juice. Spread this thickly over buttered whole wheat bread. Cover with another slice, trim off the crusts and serve on a bed of lettuce leaves.
A cold-roast-leftovers sandwich built on the classic mutton-and-mint pairing, with capers standing in for a sauce. Two things need translating: the volume measure for chopped meat, and the fact that mutton is now a specialty purchase.
- A pint of chopped meatMeasured by volume, not weight: a pint of finely chopped cooked meat, lightly packed, is about 2 cups, or roughly 12 oz to 1 lb off the bone. That is the filling for six to eight sandwiches.
- MuttonMutton means sheep over a year old, with a stronger, fattier flavor than lamb; most American butchers no longer carry it. Cold roast leg or shoulder of lamb behaves the same way here, though the result is milder and you may want the full tablespoon of lemon.
- Salt with a light handA teaspoon of salt per pint assumes unseasoned boiled or plainly roasted meat. If your roast was salted, brined, or served with gravy, start with a quarter teaspoon and taste.
- Chop, do not processA food processor turns cold cooked lamb into paste and squeezes out what little moisture it has. Chop by hand on a board so the filling stays in distinct grains.
- Capers and mintDrain and roughly chop the capers so they distribute rather than bursting in one bite; brined and salt-packed both work, but rinse salt-packed first. Spearmint is the usual mint for this pairing; chop it just before mixing, since chopped mint darkens and dulls fairly quickly.
- BindingAs written the filling is dry and depends on butter spread generously to the edges of both slices. A tablespoon of softened butter or mayonnaise worked into the meat itself keeps it from crumbling out of the sandwich.
- ServingMix and assemble close to serving; the lemon juice can dull the color of the meat and may weep into the bread if the sandwiches sit more than an hour or two. Trim the crusts after assembling, not before, and cut into halves or quarters.
Mint with sheep is a long-established English flavor pairing, and capers with mutton is nearly as old: boiled leg of mutton with caper sauce was standard nineteenth-century British household cooking, and this sandwich is essentially that sauce chopped into the meat. The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911 from the pattern-and-magazine publisher Butterick, aimed at the same middle-class housekeeper who bought its dress patterns, and its sandwich chapter reflects a period when the sandwich had moved from tavern food to the afternoon tea table, the luncheon plate and the picnic basket. Recipes like this one also served a practical end: a Sunday roast was expected to reappear on Monday and Tuesday in some other form. The whole wheat bread is a small marker of the era's health enthusiasms, when graham and whole wheat flours were promoted as more wholesome than white.