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Potted Ham Sandwich
Between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread spread potted ham; remove crusts and shape them in triangular form. Garnish top with a radish.
An assembly recipe of the kind that fills most of this book: three lines, no quantities, and an assumption that the cook already has a pot of ham in the larder. The only real decisions are what "potted ham" means and in what order you cut.
- Potted hamAt the time this was written this meant cooked ham pounded to a paste with butter and spice, packed into a jar and sealed under a layer of clarified butter. The supermarket equivalent is deviled ham spread; better still, pulse 8 oz cooked ham with 3 tablespoons softened butter, a pinch of mace and a little mustard until smooth.
- Butter the bread, and mean it"Lightly buttered" is not decoration. The butter is a barrier that keeps the moisture in the ham paste from soaking the crumb, which is the difference between a sandwich that holds up an hour and one that does not.
- Cut after filling, not beforeThe instruction removes crusts and shapes the triangles once the sandwich is made. Stack, press gently, then trim all four edges with a long serrated knife in one stroke per side; trimming the slices first leaves ragged filled edges.
- The breadA close-grained white sandwich loaf, sliced thin, is what is wanted. Day-old bread cuts far more cleanly than fresh, and a well-chilled loaf thin-slices without tearing.
- The radishA period garnish, meant to sit on top as colour and bite rather than to be eaten separately. Cut it into a fan or thin rounds and set it on at the last moment; radishes weep and go limp within the half hour.
- YieldThe original gives none. Reckon on 8 oz of potted ham filling about 12 sandwiches cut into 4 triangles each, which is a plate for a tea or reception of eight to ten people.
- Holding themAssemble and trim up to three hours ahead, layer between damp (not wet) tea towels or waxed paper in a covered dish, and refrigerate. Garnish only as they go out.
This comes from an era when potted meats were a preservation technique rather than a convenience product: meat cooked, pounded fine with butter and spice, pressed into a crock and sealed under a cap of clarified butter that excluded air and kept the contents edible for weeks in a cool larder. English cookery had been potting beef, ham, tongue and game that way since at least the seventeenth century, and by the late nineteenth century American commercial canners were selling the same idea in tins as "deviled ham." The crustless triangle, meanwhile, belongs to the fashion for afternoon tea and ladies' luncheons that produced this book and dozens like it, where sandwiches were expected to be small, uniform, eaten without a knife, and garnished, hence the radish sitting on top for no purpose but the look of the plate.