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Roulettes
Thin slices Graham or Boston brown bread 1 gill (1/2 cup) chopped cooked chicken 1 gill (1/2 cup) chopped cooked ham Anchovy paste Chopped capers ½ teaspoonful lemonjuice 2 hard-cooked eggs 2 tablespoonfuls chopped parsley Remove the crusts from the bread. Pound the chicken and ham together, then mix them to taste with anchovy paste, chopped capers and lemon-juice. Spread the slices of bread with this mixture; roll each slice neatly, butter the outside of each roulette lightly, then roll one-
A rolled sandwich for a tea table or buffet, cut off mid-instruction in the original text. Everything up to the rolling is complete; the last step is almost certainly a coating of the chopped egg and parsley listed among the ingredients.
- The gillA gill is half a cup, as the recipe helpfully glosses. Half a cup of chopped cooked chicken is roughly 2.5 oz off a poached breast; the same again of ham.
- The missing endingThe two hard-cooked eggs and the parsley appear in the ingredient list but never in the surviving text. The likeliest finish is to chop them and roll the buttered outside of each roulette in one or the other, but the text breaks off before it says so.
- Bread that will bendGraham and Boston brown bread are both dense and crumbly, and slices thick enough to handle will crack when rolled. Cut them as thin as the loaf allows, and flatten each slice with a rolling pin first. Steamed Boston brown bread comes as a cylinder, so its slices are rounds rather than squares.
- PoundingA mortar or a food processor pulsed in short bursts both work. Stop while there is still some texture; a smooth paste spreads better but tastes of nothing in particular.
- Anchovy paste is the saltWith ham and capers already in the mixture, add the anchovy paste half a teaspoon at a time and taste. No further salt is likely to be needed.
- BindingPounded meat alone will not hold. A tablespoon of softened butter or thick mayonnaise worked into the mixture makes it spreadable and keeps the roll closed.
- Holding themRoll seam-side down, chill 30 minutes firm before coating, and they will hold their shape. Cut into two-inch lengths if serving as canapes.
- YieldThe filling covers roughly eight to ten thin slices, giving eight to ten rolls or about two dozen cut pieces.
Rolled bread-and-filling sandwiches were a fixture of American entertaining books in the first decades of the twentieth century, when the afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon called for something small, cold and made in advance. The name shares a root with the French roulade, both going back to rouler, to roll. Graham and Boston brown bread were common household loaves of the period, and Boston brown bread in particular is associated with New England cookery. Potting and pounding cooked meat with anchovy was itself an older British inheritance, a way of using up the last of a roast that survived into the sandwich age largely as a flavouring trick.