Home › Meat › Sandwich (Spread thin slices of buttered)
Sandwich (Spread thin slices of buttered)
Spread thin slices of buttered white bread with English walnut or almond meats chopped fine. Spread the corresponding pieces with cold boiled chicken chopped fine; add a little mayonnaise dressing and press pieces together. Garnish with an olive.
A closed sandwich built in two halves — nuts on one slice, dressed chicken on the other — from a period when sandwich books ran to hundreds of near-identical variations. A few things are worth pinning down.
- "English walnut"The ordinary walnut sold everywhere today. The qualifier distinguished it from the black walnut, which is native to North America, far stronger in flavour and much harder to shell. Either walnuts or blanched almonds work; toast them briefly to keep them from tasting flat against the mayonnaise.
- Cold boiled chickenPoached rather than boiled at a rolling boil, which toughens the breast. Meat left from a poached bird is ideal; roast chicken is fine but drier and will want a little more dressing. Chop rather than shred — the period texture is fine and even, not stringy.
- MayonnaiseA little goes on the chicken side only, enough to bind. The nut side stays dry; the butter seals the bread, and the effect is that the nuts keep some crispness against the moist filling.
- Bread and butterButter must be soft enough to spread without tearing thin slices, and it should reach the crust edges — it is a moisture barrier as much as a flavour. The recipe specifies only white bread; a close-crumbed sandwich loaf suits the thin slices called for.
- The garnishAn olive speared on a pick, or simply set alongside. The recipe does not say which kind; green olives in brine are the likelier intention, though ripe black olives were also sold in the period.
- Yield and holdingThe recipe gives no quantities; as a rough modern guide, about a cup of chopped chicken and half a cup of nuts would fill four to six sandwiches. Assembled, they hold an hour or two covered with a damp cloth and refrigerated; the chicken and mayonnaise mean they should not sit out on a tea table all afternoon.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first two decades of the twentieth century, riding on the growth of ladies' luncheons, card parties, church suppers and the packed office lunch. They typically consist of long unnumbered runs of variations on a handful of bases — chicken, ham, egg, cheese, nuts — recombined until the list is filled out, which is often said to be why so many entries, like this one, have no title beyond the instruction itself. The chicken-and-nut pairing was among the most durable of these combinations. Its appearance here also reflects a wider enthusiasm of the period: nut sandwiches, nut loaves and nut butters turn up constantly in cookbooks of the 1900s and 1910s, encouraged both by convenience and by the vegetarian and health-reform writers of the day.