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Mutton and Pea Sandwich
Butter slices of white bread lightly and lay on them thin slices of cold boiled mutton. Mix together half a pint of cooked peas that have been seasoned with salt, pepper, a little butter, and a teaspoonful of capers. Place a layer of peas over the mutton, then a crisp lettuce leaf, then cover with another slice of buttered bread, and cut into triangles.
A straightforward assembly sandwich whose only real technique is keeping the pea layer from turning the bread to paste. Everything else is shopping.
- Half a pint of peasThat is one cup of cooked peas by American measure. The recipe does not say how many sandwiches it fills, but a cup will spread over several. Fresh shelled peas or frozen peas both work; tinned peas are softer and probably closer to the texture a cook of the period would have had on hand.
- Crush, do not puréeThe peas need to hold together as a layer. Mash them roughly with a fork against the butter so they bind, but stop well short of a smooth purée, which weeps and slides out when the sandwich is cut.
- Drain hardWet peas are the failure mode here. Drain thoroughly and let them cool before mixing, then spread on the mutton rather than directly on the bread so the meat acts as a barrier.
- MuttonMutton, from an older sheep, is strong-flavoured and firm, and is uncommon at most retail counters now, though halal and Caribbean butchers often carry it and British specialist butchers still sell it. Cold roast leg of lamb is the usual stand-in; slice it as thin as the knife allows, since thick cold lamb is chewy and pushes the layers apart.
- Cold boiledThe wording points to leftovers from a boiled joint. If you are cooking specifically for this, poach a piece of lamb shoulder in salted water with an onion and bay, then cool it fully in the liquid so it does not dry out.
- CapersA teaspoonful in a cup of peas is a light hand and works as intended: acid and salt against fatty meat. Rinse brined capers, and chop them if they are the larger grades.
- Assembly orderButter both slices right to the edges — it is the only moisture seal — and put the lettuce against the top slice as written. Cut into triangles with a serrated knife in one pull rather than sawing.
- ServingBest eaten within an hour or two. Made ahead and refrigerated, the peas dull and the bread softens; the sandwich does not improve with sitting.
Sandwich books proliferated in the first decades of the twentieth century, when afternoon tea, card parties and packed luncheons all demanded something more inventive than bread and cheese, and publishers answered with slim volumes running to hundreds of numbered combinations. Their logic is largely the logic of leftovers: a household that had boiled a leg of mutton on Sunday needed a use for it on Monday, and mutton was still ordinary meat in Britain and America at the time rather than the specialty item it has since become. The pea-and-caper mixture here does the work a condiment would do now, supplying moisture, salt and acid to cold meat that has none of its own — the same reasoning behind the mint sauce and caper sauce traditionally served hot with the joint.