Home › Meat › Boston Club Sandwich
Boston Club Sandwich
Cut brown bread into rounds with a cake cutter and lightly butter. Chop one-half pound of cold boiled mutton fine; add a dash of salt and pepper, two tablespoonfuls of olive oil, or melted butter. On the lower round of buttered bread place a small crisp lettuce heart that has been dipped in mayonnaise dressing. On top of that place a slice of tomato, then another slice of buttered bread, then the mutton mixture. Place on top another round of buttered bread and press the two together.
A three-decker built on rounds of dark bread rather than toast, and a good use for the tail end of a roast. A few things in the original need translating before you build one.
- What "brown bread" means hereIn an American book of this period brown bread may mean Boston brown bread — a steamed loaf of rye, cornmeal and wheat sweetened with molasses, which comes out cylindrical and cuts into natural rounds — but it can equally mean a plain wholemeal or graham loaf, and the instruction to cut rounds with a cake cutter suggests ordinary slices. A dense wholemeal or pumpernickel cut with a 3-inch cutter works if you are not steaming a loaf.
- Three slices, not twoThe instructions run bottom bread, lettuce, tomato, middle bread, mutton, top bread. The closing line about pressing "the two together" appears to refer to the two halves of the stack rather than to two slices.
- Cold boiled muttonMature mutton is scarce outside halal and specialist butchers. Leftover braised or roasted lamb shoulder is the closest substitute; chop rather than shred, so the mixture holds together under pressure.
- The oil is the binderTwo tablespoons of olive oil to half a pound of chopped meat is what turns dry cold roast into a spreadable filling. Melted butter works but sets firm when chilled, so use the oil if the sandwich will be made ahead.
- Season the meat hardCold boiled meat is bland, and if you use Boston brown bread it is sweet as well. A dash of salt and pepper is the minimum; a spoonful of the mayonnaise, or a little mustard or capers, is in the spirit of the thing.
- YieldHalf a pound of chopped meat should fill something like four rounds of this size — call it four sandwiches (twelve rounds of bread), or eight halves for a tea table.
- Assemble lateSliced tomato against buttered bread is fine for an hour or so; longer and the bottom round goes wet. Salt the tomato slices and drain them on paper if the sandwiches must stand.
The book this comes from dates from the first decade of the twentieth century, when the sandwich moved from tavern food to the centre of the ladies' luncheon and the card party. The club sandwich itself is generally traced to American clubs and resort hotels of the 1890s, and its defining feature was the double-decker construction rather than any fixed filling; a Boston version was distinguished by Boston brown bread, the steamed molasses loaf associated with the city's Saturday-night baked beans. Mutton in the filling is the period showing: households roasted or boiled large joints and were expected to have a plan for the cold remainder, and the sandwich chapter of a book like this is in large part a catalogue of such plans.