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Frankfurt Sausage Sandwich
Cut cold boiled Frankfurt sausage into the thinnest slices and place on slice of buttered white or rye bread; run a cucumber pickle through a meat chopper and sprinkle on top of sausage. Place another buttered slice over this. SALAMI (ITALIAN SAUSAGE)
A delicatessen sandwich from the era before the hot dog bun took over: the sausage is served cold and sliced, not hot in a roll. The whole thing depends on cutting thin enough that the slices behave like a cold cut.
- What "Frankfurt sausage" meansA frankfurter or wiener, essentially the same product sold today as a hot dog. A good all-beef or pork-and-beef frank from a butcher counter is closest; a knackwurst or bockwurst works too and slices more cleanly.
- "Cold boiled"Commercial frankfurters are already fully cooked, so this means simmered through to heat them, then cooled completely. Gently poach 8-10 minutes at a bare simmer, then chill several hours or overnight — a warm sausage will tear rather than slice.
- SlicingThe instruction to cut "the thinnest slices" is the hinge. Cut on a sharp diagonal with a thin-bladed knife so each slice is wide and coin-thin; thick rounds roll under the top slice of bread and the sandwich falls apart.
- The pickleA cucumber pickle run through a meat chopper is a coarse homemade relish. A pulse or two in a food processor, or a rough hand-chop of a dill or half-sour pickle, gives the same texture. Drain it well or the brine will soak the bread.
- Butter on both slicesNot just seasoning — the butter seals the crumb against pickle liquid. Spread it edge to edge and use it soft, not melted.
- BreadRye is the better of the two options here; a light deli rye with or without caraway stands up to the pickle. Use a firm sandwich loaf rather than an open-crumbed artisan bread, which the relish will fall through.
- YieldOne frankfurter, sliced thin, fills roughly one to two sandwiches depending on how generously you layer. The book gives no quantity.
- The stray line at the end"SALAMI (ITALIAN SAUSAGE)" is the heading of the next entry in the original book, caught at the foot of the page. It is not part of this recipe.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) collected several hundred fillings at a moment when the sandwich was becoming respectable American lunch food rather than tavern fare, and its meat section leans heavily on the German-American delicatessen counter and its cured and boiled sausage. The frankfurter takes its name from Frankfurt am Main, where a sausage of that type is traditionally traced back for centuries; it appears here cold and in slices, though the hot sausage in a split roll was already sold at ballparks and street stands by 1909. The ground cucumber pickle is the same impulse that produced bottled sandwich relish: a way to get acid and crunch into a sandwich without a slice of anything sliding out.