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Ham and Nut Sandwich
Mince finely some cold boiled ham and add to it about half the quantity of finely chopped peanuts. For every cupful of ham add a tablespoonful of chopped pickles and a little chopped celery. Mix to a paste with salad dressing and spread on thin slices of lightly buttered white bread and serve on a lettuce leaf.
A potted-ham spread of the type that filled lunch pails and tea trays before commercial deviled ham took over. The proportions are given loosely, so treat the cup of ham as the unit and scale from there.
- Proportions, restated as weightOne cup of finely minced ham is roughly 5 oz off the bone; half that quantity of peanuts is about half a cup chopped. Plus a tablespoon of chopped pickle and celery to taste -- the recipe says only "a little."
- "Peanuts" here means unsalted"Peanuts" here probably means plain roasted and shelled rather than salted, though the recipe does not say. Salted roasted peanuts plus cured ham plus pickle will make the filling aggressively salty, so use unsalted and taste before adding any more seasoning.
- Salad dressing is not mayonnaise from a jarIn this period "salad dressing" often meant a cooked, boiled dressing thickened with egg and flour and sharpened with vinegar, though mayonnaise was also in use. Mayonnaise works, but a boiled dressing, or a mayonnaise loosened with a teaspoon of vinegar, is closer to the intended tang.
- Chop, do not processA food processor turns ham and peanuts to a uniform paste and the peanuts release oil. Chop both by hand, or pulse the ham only, so the nuts stay as distinct bits of crunch against the soft meat.
- PicklesCucumber pickle is the likely intent, sweet or sour according to taste, though the recipe does not specify. Whichever you use, squeeze the chopped pickle and the celery dry in a towel first or the filling will weep into the bread.
- Bread and assemblyThin sliced white bread, crusts trimmed, butter spread edge to edge; the butter is a moisture barrier as much as a flavor. Made more than an hour ahead, the sandwiches want a damp cloth over them in the refrigerator.
- YieldOne cupful of ham makes filling for about five or six sandwiches, or a couple of dozen quartered tea sandwiches.
- The lettuceServed on a lettuce leaf, not in the sandwich: the leaf keeps the bread off the plate and provides the garnish. A crisp iceberg or Bibb leaf holds its shape; tender leaf lettuce collapses.
Sandwich books were a small publishing boom in the first decade of the twentieth century, when the sandwich moved from tavern food to the centerpiece of ladies' luncheons, card parties and the new fashion for packed lunches. Collections like this one ran to many variations, most built on the same logic visible here: take a cold cooked meat, mince it, extend it with something cheap and crunchy, bind it with dressing. Peanuts were the era's fashionable extender, their cheapness often attributed to the expansion of Southern peanut acreage after the Civil War, and they turn up in period sandwich fillings alongside chicken, veal and ham as often as in candy. The recipe also reflects a household that expected to have cold boiled ham on hand as a matter of course.