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Club Sandwiches
To each person allow three slices of white bread quickly, toasted and buttered. It should be hot. Spread each piece lightly with Mazola Mayonnaise. On this lay thinly sliced chicken. Add a little shredded lettuce and more Mayonnaise. Put on the second slice of toast, spread it with Mayonnaise and on it lay some thinly sliced raw tomato and two or three slices of broiled bacon. Add more shredded lettuce and Mayonnaise. Top with the third piece of toast. Cut across to form triangles.
A three-decker club, assembled hot, from a corn-oil promotional booklet. The instructions are sound; the only real difficulties are structural.
- Mazola MayonnaisePresumably a mayonnaise made with the booklet sponsor's corn oil rather than olive oil. Any good commercial mayonnaise works, though one made with a neutral oil is closest to what was intended.
- Toast it hot, and lateThe recipe stresses "quickly toasted" and "hot" for a reason: this sandwich is built and eaten immediately. Toast that has sat and cooled goes leathery under mayonnaise and collapses under three layers.
- Butter and mayonnaise bothThe butter is not redundant. It seals the toast against the tomato and the dressing, which is what keeps the middle slice from turning to paste.
- TomatoSlice thin, then drain the slices a few minutes on paper towel. Raw tomato releases a surprising amount of liquid between the layers, and the period recipe gives no help with it.
- Bacon"Broiled" here means cooked until crisp, by whatever method; limp bacon will drag out of the sandwich in one piece at the first bite.
- ChickenPoached or roasted breast, sliced thin and cold or barely warm. Deli turkey is the modern default but changes the flavour noticeably.
- Holding it togetherPush a cocktail pick through each quarter before cutting, then cut with a serrated knife in a sawing motion rather than pressing down.
- YieldThree slices of bread per person gives one substantial sandwich, cut into triangles; the recipe does not say how many pieces.
The club sandwich appears in American cookbooks and hotel menus from the 1890s onward, and its name is generally traced to the men's social clubs and country clubs where late-night kitchens turned out toast, cold chicken and bacon for members. By the 1920s it had become standard luncheon-counter fare, which is why it turns up here in a corn-oil manufacturer's booklet: these promotional cookbooks aimed squarely at dishes a home cook already recognised from restaurants, then attached the sponsor's product to them. The three-slice construction is often taken as the mark of a club sandwich, though early versions were frequently made on two slices of toast, and the diagonal cut into triangles is conventional rather than part of any strict definition.