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Roast Beef Salad Sandwich
Chop fine one cup of cold roast beef, one-half head of lettuce, one boiled beet, one hard-boiled egg, one small onion, and one pickled cucumber. Mix with French dressing and place between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread.
A chopped-salad filling rather than a sliced-meat sandwich, and it behaves like one: the wetter it is, the faster the bread fails. Everything here is a matter of drainage and knife work.
- Drain before you dressBeet, pickled cucumber and lettuce all shed liquid once chopped. Press the chopped beet and cucumber in a sieve or between paper towels, and dress the mixture only just before assembling, or the bread turns pink and sodden within minutes.
- French dressing, 1909 senseFrench dressing, period sense -- Not the sweet orange bottled kind. It means a simple vinaigrette: roughly three parts oil to one part vinegar with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken. Two to three tablespoons is enough for this quantity.
- "Pickled cucumber"A whole small pickled cucumber in brine, not a sweet gherkin. A medium dill pickle is the closest supermarket equivalent; chop it fine and squeeze it dry.
- The onionOne small raw onion chopped fine will dominate a cup of beef. Shallot, or onion rinsed in cold water and drained, keeps the sharpness without the afterburn.
- Chop, do not processA food processor turns beef and beet into a damp paste. Hand-chop to a coarse mince so the filling holds together in the bread and still has texture.
- Cold roast beefLeftover roast is the intent, and cold meat chops far more cleanly than warm. Sliced deli roast beef works if it is stacked and cut by hand, though it is saltier, so hold back on salt in the dressing.
- YieldEnough for several sandwiches on thin bread, or a plate of small tea sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first decades of the twentieth century, arriving with the fashion for afternoon teas, card parties and packed luncheons. The salad sandwich reflects the period's enthusiasm for chopped and dressed mixtures held together by mayonnaise or French dressing, a category that produced everything from chicken salad to beet-and-egg combinations. Beet contributes color as much as flavor.