Ham Fingers
Run lean ham through the meat chopper, season with salt and pepper, and moisten with a little salad dressing. Place the ham between slices of thinly cut and lightly buttered bread. Cut in shape of lady fingers and garnish with a sprig of watercress.
A straightforward potted-ham sandwich cut into narrow strips. The only real decisions are the grind of the ham and how much dressing goes in.
- Meat chopperThe hand-cranked meat grinder of the period; a food processor pulsed in short bursts does the same job. Stop while the ham still has texture, since a paste spreads unevenly and reads as pate rather than sandwich filling.
- Salad dressingIn this period this usually means a cooked boiled dressing, thickened with egg and flour and sharpened with vinegar or mustard, rather than the bottled sweet dressing sold under that name now. Mayonnaise thinned with a little mustard is the closest ready substitute.
- How much to moistenAbout a tablespoon of dressing to a cup of chopped ham. The mixture should just hold together when pressed; excess dressing soaks the thin bread and the fingers fall apart when cut.
- Lean hamAny cooked ham off the bone works. Avoid heavily glazed or honey-cured ham, which will fight the vinegar in the dressing, and taste before salting, as modern hams are already well salted.
- Lady fingersThe reference is to the biscuit shape, not the sponge itself: strips roughly three inches by one. Trim the crusts first, then cut with a long sharp knife in a single stroke.
- BreadA close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, sliced thin, suits the recipe's call for thinly cut bread. Chill the assembled sandwiches under a damp cloth for twenty minutes before cutting to get clean edges.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; the number of fingers depends on the size of the loaf and how narrowly each sandwich is cut. They are meant to be eaten the same day, and the watercress wilts quickly once the plate is stood out.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the early twentieth century, tied to the rise of the afternoon tea, the ladies' luncheon and the card party, all occasions that called for food eaten standing up and without a knife. The finger shape is the tell: it is designed for a plate passed around a room, not a meal at table. Chopped-ham fillings of this kind were also a thrifty way to use the last of a boiled or baked ham, the same impulse that produced potted meats and deviled ham, and the moistening with a boiled dressing rather than plain butter reflects an era when egg-and-flour dressings were made at home.