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Hot Ham Sandwich No. 2
Spread finely minced boiled ham on thin slices of lightly buttered bread. Put the sandwiches together and cut into triangles. Beat two eggs light, add a cup of milk and a pinch of salt. Dip the sandwiches in the egg and milk and fry brown on a hot buttered griddle. Garnish with a slice of broiled tomato and serve at once.
A savory pain perdu — essentially a ham sandwich given the French toast treatment. The technique is sound; only the handling needs a modern eye.
- Dip briefly, do not soakThin bread already cut into triangles will collapse if left in the custard. A one-second pass per side is enough — the butter between the bread and the ham helps keep the interior from going wet.
- Seal the edgesCutting before dipping exposes the filling on two sides. Press the cut edges firmly together with the heel of your hand so the ham stays put in the pan.
- Griddle heatThe book says only 'hot'; on a modern electric griddle a medium setting, somewhere around 325-350F, answers. Higher and the egg coating browns before the ham warms through; the filling is already cooked, so you are only heating and setting the crust, roughly 2 to 3 minutes a side.
- Finely minced boiled hamLeftover boiled ham would have been chopped fine with a knife or put through a hand grinder. Pulse deli ham or a piece of cooked ham in a food processor until fine and cohesive — a coarse chop will fall out of the sandwich.
- Batter quantityTwo eggs and a cup of milk is generous, more than enough for several sandwiches. Halve it if you are making only two or three, and discard what is left rather than keeping it once ham has been dragged through it.
- Broiled tomatoCut a thick slice, salt it, and broil 4 inches from the element until blistered, about 4 minutes. Cut thin, it turns to water on the plate.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; served with the tomato the sandwiches make a lunch course, or, cut small, a supper savory.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) belongs to a brief American publishing boom in sandwich manuals, when the sandwich was moving out of the picnic hamper and onto the luncheon table — much of the book is aimed at women's club lunches, card parties and chafing-dish suppers rather than workmen's dinner pails. This particular formula is a savory application of the technique known in English cookbooks as French toast, German toast or "poor knights" and, in French, pain perdu: stale bread revived in an egg-and-milk custard. The presence of "No. 2" in the title is a reminder that Fuller's book worked by variation — dozens of numbered fillings on a handful of repeating methods.