Home › Meat › Potted Meat Sandwich
Potted Meat Sandwich
Chop one pound of tender cooked veal fine and add one-fourth cup of fat pork cooked and chopped fine. Season with salt and pepper, a little anchovy essence, and a little mace. Moisten with a little butter and work until smooth. Press the mixture solidly into small can or jar, pour melted butter to the depth of onehalf inch over same, and set in a cool place. When ready for use, slice and place between thin slices of white bread. Garnish with a pickle.
A straightforward English potted meat, adapted for the American sandwich table. The one thing to get right is the fat: too little and the paste is dry and crumbly on bread, too much and it separates in the jar.
- Anchovy essenceA thin bottled anchovy extract, once sold everywhere and now rare. Anchovy paste from a tube is the closest substitute; start with half a teaspoon per pound of meat and taste, since paste is far more concentrated than the old essence.
- Fat porkFresh pork fatback or unsmoked side pork, simmered until tender and chopped. Salt pork will work if you rinse it and cut the added salt accordingly. Bacon changes the flavor entirely because of the smoke and cure.
- One-fourth cup, choppedThe wording most likely means the cooked, chopped fat rather than the raw piece, though it can be read either way; figure on a couple of ounces of raw pork, allowing for rendering loss. It reads like a small amount against a pound of veal, and it is; the butter does much of the enriching.
- "Work until smooth"Hand-chopping followed by pounding in a mortar was the original method, and it gives a slightly coarse, fibrous paste. A food processor does it in seconds but will turn the mixture pasty if run too long. Pulse, and add the butter softened rather than melted so the emulsion holds.
- VealLeftover roast or braised veal shoulder is ideal. Cooked chicken thigh or pork shoulder substitutes well; lean turkey breast does not, as there is not enough connective tissue or fat to carry the seasoning.
- MaceThe outer covering of the nutmeg seed, warmer and less sweet than nutmeg itself. A quarter teaspoon of ground mace is about right here. Ground nutmeg at half that quantity is a passable stand-in.
- The butter sealThe half inch of melted butter excludes air and keeps the surface from darkening. It is not a preservative in any modern sense. Clarified butter seals better than whole butter, which carries milk solids and water.
- Storage, not "a cool place"An unrefrigerated larder is not adequate for a low-acid cooked meat packed airtight under fat. Refrigerate it, keep it covered, and use it within three or four days as you would any fresh pate.
- YieldRoughly two cups of paste, enough for something in the region of ten to twelve sandwiches on thin white bread. Spread it thinly; the mixture is rich, and the thin white bread with a pickle garnish points to a tea sandwich rather than a lunch.
Potting meat under a layer of fat is one of the oldest English keeping methods still in domestic use, traceable in printed cookery from the seventeenth century onward, when cooked meat was pounded with butter and spices, pressed into earthenware pots and sealed with clarified butter to keep for weeks in a cold larder. Mace and anchovy were the standard seasonings for potted veal, chicken and beef throughout the Georgian and Victorian periods, and they persisted into commercial products long after home cooks stopped relying on the technique for storage. By the time this sandwich book appeared, refrigeration and canned meats had made potting largely a matter of flavor and convenience rather than preservation, and the small jar of potted veal had found a new job: a ready spread for the thin, crustless sandwiches served at afternoon teas, card parties and picnics. The instruction to garnish with a pickle is of its moment, when something sharp was a common foil for anything rich and potted.