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Sandwiches, Chicken Club
Cut twelve one-inch-thick slices from a sandwich loaf, toast to a nice golden colour, lay on a clean board and lightly butter with good butter. Cover six (only) toasts with thin slices cooked chicken white meat, either boiled or roasted, lightly season with fine salt and a very little white pepper. Broil six very thin slices lean bacon for one minute on each side, cut each slice in two and lay the two pieces over chicken on each toast. Spread a very little mayonnaise over six white well-cleaned and thoroughly drained leaves of lettuce, cover with other six pieces of toast and gently flatten them with the hand. Neatly trim off crusts all around, cut in two in triangular shapes, dress on a hot dish, place in oven for two minutes, remove and immediately serve.
N. B. Six thin slices ham can be substituted for the bacon if desired.
A two-decker club, built as a warm sandwich rather than the three-tiered version most people expect. The instructions are sound; only the bread, the bacon timing and the final trip to the oven need thought.
- One-inch breadA sandwich loaf of this period was cut by hand from an unsliced pan loaf, and an inch is substantially thicker than modern commercial sliced bread (roughly 1/2 inch). Buy an unsliced loaf and cut it yourself, or accept a thinner, less substantial sandwich.
- Bacon timingOne minute a side under a broiler leaves modern bacon limp and flabby. Give thin-cut streaky bacon 3-4 minutes a side, or until it is crisp enough to snap, then drain on paper before it goes on the chicken.
- Assemble in orderThe hinge is that the mayonnaise goes on the lettuce, not on the toast. Dressing the leaf keeps the toast from going soggy under it, which matters more here than in a cold sandwich because the whole thing is then heated.
- The two minutes in the ovenThis is a brief warm-through, not baking; the recipe gives no temperature, so keep the oven moderate. Any longer and the lettuce collapses and weeps. If you would rather not risk it, warm the plates instead and skip the oven.
- ChickenThin slices of cooked breast, carved from a roast or poached bird. Carve across the grain and slice no thicker than 1/8 inch, or the sandwich pushes apart when cut.
- White pepperVery likely chosen so the seasoning leaves no black flecks on white meat, though the recipe does not say so. Use it finely ground and sparingly, since white pepper reads more musty than hot.
- Trimming and cuttingFlatten with the flat of the hand, trim all four crusts with a long serrated knife, then cut corner to corner. Wiping the blade between cuts keeps the mayonnaise off the cut faces.
- YieldSix sandwiches, twelve triangles. Enough for six as a light lunch course or three as a full plate.
The club sandwich appears in American cookbooks and hotel menus from the late 1880s onward, and its name is generally traced to gentlemen's clubs and country clubs, where it was a standing order for members wanting something substantial but not a full meal; the claim that it began at the Union Club of New York is traditional rather than documented. Early printed versions like this one are frequently two slices rather than three, which suggests the triple-decker with its central slice of toast was a later refinement. That it is served hot here, straight from a two-minute stint in the oven and onto a heated dish, is a reminder that at least some early versions were a cooked kitchen order rather than the cold assembled thing the club later became. The International Cook Book treats it as exactly that: a short-order dish with an exact count of slices and a note on substituting ham.