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Roast Beef and Jam Sandwich
Between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread, place thin slices of cold roast beef; on top of this spread plum jam.
A two-line formula that depends entirely on the balance between the meat and the jam. The proportions are left to the cook, and they matter more than anything else here.
- Slice the beef thinCold roast beef carved thick will fight the soft bread and the jam will slide off. Shave it as thin as the knife allows, or use rare deli roast beef; two or three folded slices per sandwich is the right weight.
- Jam, not jellyThe recipe wants jam, with fruit in it, rather than a clear jelly. Plum jams vary a good deal in sweetness; spread it thin, a scant teaspoon, or look for a damson preserve, which brings more of the sourness the pairing needs.
- Butter both slices"Lightly buttered" is doing structural work: the butter film keeps the jam from soaking into the crumb and turning the bread to paste. Butter the cut faces right to the edges and have it soft enough to spread without tearing.
- White bread means a fine crumbThe recipe specifies only thin white bread, but a close-textured sandwich loaf suits it best. An open artisan crumb lets the jam run through.
- Serve at onceThis is a made-to-order sandwich, not one to wrap and carry. Assembled ahead, the jam weeps and the bread goes grey underneath the beef.
Eva Greene Fuller's The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) collected several hundred combinations at a moment when the sandwich was moving from a tavern snack to a fixture of ladies' luncheons, card parties and afternoon teas, and the pressure to produce novelty is visible on every page. Meat with sweet fruit was not the oddity it looks like now: cold beef and mutton had long been sent to the table with red currant jelly, damson cheese or a sharp fruit "catsup", and plum jam here is doing the same job of cutting rich cold meat that a chutney or a cranberry sauce still does. What marks the recipe as of its period is the packaging rather than the flavour, the old sideboard condiment folded inside two slices of thin white bread and served on a plate at three in the afternoon.