Mutton Sandwich
Chop cold boiled mutton fine, add a dash of tabasco sauce, a teaspoonful of olive oil or melted butter, a tablespoonful of vinegar, and a pinch of salt. Spread on lightly buttered white bread. Serve with a pickle.
A leftover-meat spread with an acidic dressing, from a period when a boiled leg of mutton was a routine Sunday dinner. The proportions given make roughly enough for two sandwiches.
- Scale the dressing to the meatThe original names no quantity of mutton. A tablespoon of vinegar with a teaspoon of oil suits about a cup of finely chopped meat, roughly 4 to 5 ounces; more meat than that and the mixture reads dry and underseasoned.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over a year old, stronger and fattier, and it is rarely sold in American supermarkets. Cold roast or braised lamb shoulder or leg is the practical substitute, though the flavour is milder and needs the vinegar less.
- Chop, do not process"Chop fine" means knife work on a board. A food processor turns cold cooked mutton to paste and the fat smears, giving a greasy spread rather than a textured one.
- Trim the fat firstMutton fat sets hard and waxy when cold and coats the palate unpleasantly. Cut away the firm outer fat before chopping; the oil or butter in the dressing supplies what richness is needed.
- Vinegar to useThe original says only "vinegar"; cider or plain white vinegar would have been the likeliest household options. Either works; a sharp red wine vinegar is closer to what modern cooks have and suits lamb well.
- Let it standMix the meat with the dressing and give it ten minutes before spreading. The vinegar softens the chopped meat and carries the tabasco through, which it will not do if you assemble immediately.
- Bread and the pickle"White bread, lightly buttered" means a thin scrape on close-crumbed sandwich bread, which keeps the vinegar from soaking through. The pickle is not decoration; a sharp cucumber or a few capers alongside is what balances the fat.
Sandwich books of this kind, published in quantity in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century, exist largely to solve the problem of Monday. A large joint of mutton or lamb was boiled or roasted for the main meal of the week, and the cold remainder had to reappear in a form nobody would resent. Chopping the meat fine and dressing it with oil, vinegar and salt is essentially a vinaigrette treatment, closely related to the cold meat salads of the same period, and the dash of tabasco is at least suggestive of the date: the Louisiana pepper sauce is generally said to have been widely available in American kitchens by the 1890s, and it appears in these collections where a recipe wants heat without the labour of a compounded seasoning. Mutton itself was still ordinary eating in American and British households then; its near-disappearance from the English-speaking market in favour of young lamb came later, and is the main reason this recipe now reads as unfamiliar.