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Saratoga Sandwich
On a lightly buttered square slice of white bread, place a lettuce leaf that has been dipped in mayonnaise dressing; on that lay four large fried oysters with a little horse-radish on top of the oysters, and cover with a lightly buttered slice of rye bread, and butter upper side of this slice. On this lay a slice of breast of cooked chicken; dust with salt and pepper and lay on that crisp slices of fried bacon; cover this with a slice of white bread. Garnish top with radishes, cut fancy, serve with slice of lemon on the side.
A triple-decker in the club sandwich mold, built on three slices of bread with fried oysters at the bottom and chicken and bacon above. Nearly everything is assembled from components cooked separately, so the order of work matters more than any single technique.
- Fry the oysters lastEverything else — chicken, bacon, dressed lettuce — can be ready and waiting. The recipe does not specify a coating or frying method; if breaded, oysters in hot fat (around 375F) need only a minute or two, until the crust sets and colours — longer and they shrink and toughen inside the coating. Drain briefly and build immediately, while the crust is still crisp.
- "Four large fried oysters""Large" most likely means one of the bigger shucked grades (selects or counts), on the order of ten or so to the half pint. Shucked oysters sold today may run smaller, in which case five or six may be needed to cover the bread. Pat them very dry before breading or the coating slides off.
- Horse-radishAt this period this generally meant grated fresh root, sometimes moistened with vinegar, rather than a creamed horseradish sauce. Prepared horseradish from a jar is the closest equivalent; use it sparingly, a scant teaspoon, since it sits directly against the oysters.
- The mayonnaisePeriod mayonnaise was made to order with raw yolks and used the same day. Commercial mayonnaise, made with acidified pasteurized egg, is the practical substitute and holds up better against a wet lettuce leaf. Shake the excess off the leaf so it dresses rather than soaks the bread.
- Bread and structureThe slices need enough body not to collapse under three fillings. Note that the middle rye slice is buttered on both faces, which would help keep the wet oyster layer from soaking through to the chicken above.
- Cooked chicken breastA slice off a roasted or poached breast, about a quarter inch, carved to the width of the bread. Cold cooked chicken of either kind would plausibly have been on hand; leftover roast works as well as poached.
- Radishes cut fancyRadish roses: trim the root, cut four or five shallow petals through the skin from tip toward the stem, then chill in ice water until the petals open.
- Yield and servingOne sandwich, and a substantial one. If you do cut it, press gently first so the layers do not shear apart. The lemon on the side is presumably for squeezing over the oysters rather than for looks.
The name points to Saratoga Springs, New York, the racing and mineral-spa resort whose hotel kitchens were prolific namers of dishes — Saratoga chips being the lasting example. Sandwiches like this one belong to the same moment as the club sandwich: a tall, multi-layered construction assembled from a hotel kitchen's standing supply of cold roast chicken, fried bacon and breaded oysters. Fried oysters were a cheap and ubiquitous American restaurant staple well into the twentieth century, before pollution and overharvesting thinned the Atlantic beds; that a sandwich book of this period could call casually for four large fried oysters as one layer among three says a good deal about the price of oysters then. Compendia such as this one appeared as the sandwich shifted from a picnic convenience to a menu item worth cataloguing by the hundred.</p>