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Truffle Sandwich
One tablespoonful of broiled truffle, one-half breast of chicken, and two tablespoonfuls of sweetbreads chopped fine. Add a dash of mayonnaise dressing, salt and pepper. Place between slices of buttered white bread, cut in oblong pieces. Garnish with pickle.
A luxury sandwich filling from the era when sweetbreads were a standard restaurant item and truffles were sold canned. The recipe assumes every component arrives at the bowl already cooked, which is the point that most needs stating.
- Everything goes in cookedThe instructions describe assembly only. The truffle is broiled, the chicken breast is from a roasted or poached bird, and the sweetbreads must already have been soaked, blanched, peeled and braised or sautéed before chopping. Nothing in this sandwich is cooked after mixing.
- SweetbreadsVeal thymus or pancreas, ordered from a butcher rather than found in a supermarket case. Standard preparation is several hours of soaking in cold water with changes, a brief blanch, then pressing under a weight to firm them before final cooking. Two tablespoons chopped is roughly one ounce of finished sweetbread.
- The truffleAt this period this likely meant a preserved black truffle from a tin, which has a firmer texture and a duller aroma than fresh, and which tolerates the brief broiling called for. A fresh black truffle needs little cooking; it can be shaved in raw and warmed by the other ingredients.
- "A dash of mayonnaise"Enough to bind, not to dress. The filling should hold together when pressed, and no more. Period mayonnaise was made to order with raw yolk; commercial jarred mayonnaise uses pasteurised egg and is the sensible substitute here.
- ProportionsHalf a chicken breast is the bulk of the filling, with the sweetbreads and truffle as accents. Chop all three to roughly the same fine dice so no single element dominates a bite.
- The breadPlain white sandwich bread, cut into oblongs as directed. Butter both slices to the edges; it seals the crumb against the mayonnaise and keeps the sandwich from going damp if it stands.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest filling for more than a single sandwich, cut into oblongs. For a tea tray, scale by the number of guests rather than trying to stretch the filling.
Sandwich books proliferated in the first decades of the twentieth century, when afternoon teas, card parties and club luncheons created steady demand for small, sliced, hand-held food, and this entry sits at the expensive end of that trade. Sweetbreads were then a fashionable and widely available offal, appearing in creamed dishes, patties and croquettes on hotel menus across America; they have since retreated to a specialist item. Truffles reached most American kitchens in tins, a canned-goods luxury that let a hostess signal expense with a tablespoonful. The combination of chicken breast, sweetbread and truffle was a stock trio of the period's haute cooking, familiar from vol-au-vents and financière garnishes, and here it is simply demoted to filling and set between buttered white bread. The oblong cut and the pickle garnish mark it as a plated tea or supper sandwich rather than something to be wrapped and carried.