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Ham and Egg Sandwich
Chop cold boiled ham and hard-boiled eggs fine, season with pepper and salt, and a dash of mayonnaise dressing. Place the mixture between thin slices of lightly buttered brown bread. Garnish with a small pickle.
A filling recipe with no quantities, which was normal for sandwich books of the period. The proportions are yours to set, and the texture depends almost entirely on how fine you chop.
- ProportionsTwo parts chopped ham to one part egg by volume keeps the ham flavour forward; equal parts gives a milder, more spreadable filling. About 6 oz ham and two eggs fills four sandwiches.
- Chop, do not processThe instruction to chop fine means knife-chopped to a coarse mince. A food processor turns boiled ham and egg into paste in a few seconds, which makes a filling that squeezes out of the bread.
- Cold boiled hamThis means a piece of cooked, boiled ham cut from the joint, not deli slices. Any cooked ham works, but a thick-cut piece chops better than thin shaved slices, which shred.
- A dash of mayonnaiseEnough to bind, not to sauce it -- roughly a tablespoon per cup of chopped filling. Ham is already salty, so season and taste before adding any further salt.
- Brown breadIn American usage of this period this generally meant a wholemeal or graham loaf, not the steamed Boston brown bread. A dense wholemeal sandwich loaf, sliced thin, is the closest match.
- Butter the breadThe light buttering is structural as much as anything: it seals the crumb against the mayonnaise and keeps the slices from going damp if the sandwiches sit before serving.
- KeepingChopped hard-boiled egg dressed with mayonnaise should be kept refrigerated and eaten within a day. Make the filling ahead if you like, but assemble close to serving.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first decade of the twentieth century, driven by the rise of the ladies' luncheon, the afternoon card party and the packed office or school lunch -- occasions that called for food eaten off a plate on the lap. Commercial mayonnaise was not yet a pantry staple, so a cookbook of this date assumes the reader has a bowl of dressing already made and needs only a dash of it. Ham and egg together is an economy of the cold-larder: both are plausibly leftovers from other meals, chopped small enough to stretch. The small pickle set beside the sandwich appears to have been a common garnish of the era, doing the work of acid and crunch that a modern cook might build into the filling itself.