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Travelling Lunch
Mrs. J. L. B. .
Chop sardines, ham, and a few pickles quite fine; mix with mustard, pepper, catsup, salt, and vinegar; spread between bread nicely buttered. This is to be cut crosswise, like jelly cake.
A sandwich filling with no quantities given, which is normal for this kind of entry — the cook was expected to taste and adjust. A workable ratio is roughly equal volumes of drained sardines and cooked ham, with pickle at about half that.
- SardinesUse oil-packed sardines, drained and blotted; the bones and skin mash into the paste and need not be removed. A single 3.75 oz tin plus about 4 oz of chopped cooked ham fills four to six sandwiches.
- Catsup in 1876Catsup -- Tomato ketchup at this period was thinner, sharper and less sweet than the modern bottle, and mushroom and walnut catsups were still common. A teaspoon of modern ketchup goes a long way here; too much makes the filling sweet and pink.
- MustardProbably dry mustard powder, though prepared mustard was also in common use. Start with a scant half teaspoon, and if you use jarred mustard instead, cut back the vinegar.
- VinegarThe pickles bring acid of their own. Add vinegar a few drops at a time — the mixture should hold together as a spread, not slump.
- Chop, don't purée"Quite fine" means knife-fine. A food processor turns the ham and pickle to slurry and the filling weeps into the bread.
- Cut crosswise, like jelly cakeJelly cake was baked in thin layers spread with preserves and cut so the layers showed. The instruction most likely means slicing the made sandwich across into strips rather than the usual diagonal halves.
- Butter both faces"Bread nicely buttered" is doing real work in a lunch meant to travel. A sealed layer of butter keeps the vinegar and oil from soaking through before the sandwich is eaten.
- KeepingFish, ham and mayonnaise-free though it is, this is still a perishable spread. Make it the morning of the journey and keep it cold until it goes into the basket.
"Travelling lunch" was a practical category in American cookbooks of the 1870s, when long rail journeys were common and dining cars were not: passengers carried a covered basket. Tinned sardines made the filling possible — canned fish appears repeatedly in this period's picnic, invalid and luncheon recipes precisely because it kept without ice. The salt, vinegar, mustard and catsup all pull in the same direction: a strongly seasoned, acidic paste. The recipe compares the result to jelly cake, a layered sponge spread with preserves and cut in strips.