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Excursion Sandwich
Chop cold boiled tongue fine. To each cupful, add two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, a dash of red pepper, and one-half teaspoonful of onion juice. Mix and spread on very thin slices of white bread, cover with another slice, and serve with a pickle.
A potted-tongue spread rather than a sliced sandwich: the butter is the binder, so it must be soft enough to bind but not so warm it separates. Everything else is assembly.
- Sourcing the tongueCold boiled tongue meant a whole beef tongue simmered until tender (roughly 3 hours for a 3-lb tongue), skinned while warm, then pressed and chilled. Delis sell cooked beef tongue by the pound, and a good pastrami or corned tongue works as well; smoked pork tongue is stronger but acceptable.
- Chop, do not blitz"Chop fine" means knife-minced to a coarse paste that still has texture. A food processor turns cooked tongue into a smooth pink cream that reads as commercial potted meat.
- Melted butter as binderTwo tablespoons per cup is a lot of fat by modern habit, but it is what makes the mixture set and hold together in a cut sandwich. Let it cool to barely liquid before mixing, or it will pool; the spread firms as it chills.
- Red pepper"Red pepper" in books of this period is cayenne, not paprika or sweet pepper. A dash means about 1/8 teaspoon per cup.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or squeeze the grated pulp in cheesecloth. Half a teaspoon of juice gives sharpness without the wet crunch of chopped onion, which is the point when the sandwich has to sit.
- Bread and cuttingVery thin slices means a firm sandwich loaf shaved thin, crusts trimmed. Chill the assembled sandwiches briefly before cutting; the butter-set filling slices cleanly and the bread does not tear.
- YieldOne cup of chopped tongue fills about six thin sandwiches, cut in halves or fingers. Salt to taste at the end, since cured or corned tongue is already well seasoned.
- KeepingThe filling holds three or four days covered in the refrigerator and is easier to spread after 20 minutes at room temperature. Made-up sandwiches are best within a few hours, wrapped tightly.
The name is the whole explanation: an "excursion" was a day trip by rail or steamer, and excursion food had to survive several hours in a hamper without wilting, weeping or spoiling faster than the day allowed. Tongue is often said to have been a favoured choice for that job in Anglo-American cookery, since it was cheap, sold ready-boiled and pressed, sliced or minced without falling apart, and was already firmly seasoned; bound with butter it becomes a spread that seals the bread rather than soaking it. Recipes of this type sit alongside dozens of other minced-meat fillings in sandwich books, which proliferated from the 1890s as afternoon entertaining made the sandwich a course in its own right. Pickle is commonly served alongside rather than mixed in, and one might guess that anything vinegary in the filling would loosen the butter and dampen the bread on the journey.