Dill Sandwich
Lightly butter slices of white bread; cover half of them with thin slices of the white meat of roasted chicken; put over this a thin layer of dill pickles; cover with another slice of buttered bread, trim off the crusts, cut in triangles, and serve on a lettuce leaf.
A plain chicken-and-pickle sandwich from an era when sandwich books catalogued every possible filling combination. Nothing here is difficult; the points that matter are about texture and assembly.
- Dill pickles, thin"A thin layer" means slices shaved lengthwise or crosswise no thicker than a coin. Thick spears make the sandwich slide apart and drown the chicken, which is the point of the thing.
- Blot the picklesPickle slices carry a lot of brine. Lay them on a towel for a minute before building, or the bread will go soggy.
- White meat of roasted chickenBreast from a bird you roasted yourself, sliced cold and thin. Deli chicken breast works but is wetter and saltier.
- Butter both slices"Lightly butter" is doing structural work here, not just flavour. A thin film of softened butter on the cut faces seals the crumb against the pickle moisture.
- White breadA close-crumbed sandwich loaf, cut thin. Open, airy artisan bread will not trim cleanly into triangles and tears under the filling.
- Trim, then cutCrusts off first with a long thin knife, then one diagonal cut for two triangles or two cuts for four. Chilling the assembled sandwich ten minutes firms the butter and gives a cleaner edge.
- YieldEach pair of slices gives two to four triangles. Figure three slices of bread per person for a tea plate, more if it is lunch.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre spanning roughly the 1890s to the 1920s, driven by the fashion for afternoon teas and card parties, and they tended to work by permutation: take a base of buttered white bread, then run through every filling and pairing a household might have on hand. This one is a cold-roast-chicken sandwich sharpened with dill pickle, a combination that made sense in a kitchen where a Sunday bird was expected to reappear in Monday's luncheon. The trimmed crusts, the triangles and the lettuce leaf underneath are the markers of a "dainty" sandwich as opposed to a working man's one, and they suggest, though the book does not say so, a reader serving guests in a parlour.