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Biscuit Sandwich
Roll biscuit dough very thin, about like piecrust, and spread with butter, then roll another and put on top of this; cut out and bake in quick oven. When done, pull apart and spread with this mixture while warm. Take equal parts of chicken and ham, run through the meat chopper, season with celery salt and cayenne pepper; moisten with mayonnaise dressing.
A split-biscuit sandwich built on a trick that still works: two thin sheets of dough with butter between them bake into a biscuit that pulls apart cleanly along the seam. The rest is a straightforward potted-meat filling.
- Quick ovenRead this as 425–450F. Thin biscuits want high heat and a short bake, roughly 8–12 minutes, until the tops are set and just coloring.
- Roll thin, then stack"About like piecrust" means around 1/8 inch for each sheet. The butter between the layers is what creates the split, so spread it to the edges but do not let it pool, or the layers will slide apart while cutting.
- CuttingA 2- to 2 1/2-inch cutter gives sandwiches that fit the hand, though the recipe specifies no size. Press straight down rather than twisting; twisting seals the cut edge and works against a clean rise and split.
- Biscuit doughThe recipe assumes a standard baking-powder dough of the period: flour, baking powder, salt, cold fat cut in, milk to bind. Any modern rolled baking-powder biscuit recipe works, though keep it on the drier side so the thin sheets handle.
- Meat chopperA hand-cranked grinder. A food processor pulsed a few times does the same job, but stop while the meat still has texture; run continuously and you get paste.
- Celery salt and cayenneCelery salt was a standard seasoning in turn-of-the-century sandwich work and is still sold. Season lightly at first, as the ham brings its own salt.
- MayonnaiseOnly enough to bind, a tablespoon or two per cup of ground meat. A wet filling will soak the warm biscuit through.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup of filling from 1/2 lb combined chicken and ham, enough for 8 to 10 small biscuits. Fill while warm as directed, and serve promptly; ground meat in mayonnaise should not sit out.
Sandwich books proliferated in America between about 1900 and 1920, when the sandwich moved from a workman's lunch to a fixture of the ladies' luncheon, the card party and the church supper. Chicken and ham ground together and bound with mayonnaise was one of the standard fillings of that literature, a way of using the remnants of a roast bird and a boiled ham in a form that could be made ahead and passed on a plate. What sets this version apart is the bread: rather than trimmed white loaf, it uses the American baking-powder biscuit, and the double-sheet-with-butter method resembles the technique still used for split biscuits and layered rolls. Celery salt was commercially available by this period and appears in sandwich recipes of the era.