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Ham Sandwich No. 4
One pound of cold boiled ham run through fine knife or meat chopper, one-half cup strained lemon juice, mix with a little mayonnaise dressing, spread on thin slices of lightly buttered white bread, with a crisp lettuce leaf between.
A ground ham salad in the tea-sandwich style, from the era when a hand-cranked meat chopper sat clamped to every kitchen table. Two things in it need attention: the volume of lemon juice, and the fact that the mayonnaise is left entirely to your judgement.
- The lemon juice is the hingeHalf a cup of juice to one pound of ham is far more acid than the meat can absorb, and it will pool and soak the bread. Add it a spoonful at a time and stop when the mixture tastes bright rather than sour — a tablespoon or two is usually enough with a well-cured ham.
- "Run through fine knife"This means the fine plate of a meat grinder. A food processor pulsed in short bursts gives a similar texture; run it continuously and you get paste.
- Mayonnaise quantityThe original says only "a little," leaving the amount to you; add just enough to bind the ground ham without making it wet. Period mayonnaise was made with raw yolks; commercial jarred mayonnaise uses pasteurised egg and will serve here.
- SaltNone is called for, probably because boiled ham of the period was saltier than most sold now. Modern supermarket ham varies a great deal, so taste the filling before spreading.
- The butter is structuralA thin film of softened butter helps seal the crumb against the moist filling. Skip it and the sandwiches soften quickly.
- Bread and cuttingThe recipe calls for thin slices of white bread, lightly buttered. Chill the assembled sandwiches briefly before cutting so the filling firms and the slices stay square.
- YieldOne pound of ham fills roughly twelve to fourteen rounds of sandwiches, or three to four dozen small tea-sized pieces.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first two decades of the twentieth century, and this one follows the usual pattern: dozens of numbered variations on a handful of fillings, each differing by a single ingredient. The meat chopper made grinding easy, and the same tool produced the potted meats, croquettes and hashes that fill the meat chapters of period cookbooks. Lemon juice and mayonnaise here do the work that mustard or pickle does in later ham salads, cutting the fat and the salt of a cure that may well have been heavier than anything sold today.