Veal Sandwich
Grind through meat chopper the desired amount.
To one cup of chopped meat add one tablespoonful of vinegar, one-half teaspoonful of mustard, one-half of a small onion chopped fine. Salt and pepper to taste.
Mix to a paste with mayonnaise dressing, and place between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread. Garnish with a pickle.
A leftover-roast sandwich filling from the era when a cold joint sat in the larder all week. The original assumes knowledge the modern reader may not have.
- The meat is cookedThe recipe never says so because it was taken for granted. This is cold roasted or braised veal, ground fine; raw veal ground and eaten in a sandwich is not an option. Roughly 6 oz of cooked meat gives about the cup called for.
- "Meat chopper"A hand-cranked tinned-iron grinder clamped to the table edge. A food processor pulsed in short bursts does the same job, though it will go to mush if run continuously — stop while the texture is still coarse and visible.
- MustardDry mustard powder is most likely meant rather than prepared mustard from a jar, though the recipe does not specify. If substituting prepared Dijon or yellow mustard, use about a teaspoon and a half and cut the vinegar back, since jarred mustards are already acidic.
- OnionHalf a small onion in one cup of meat is assertive by modern standards, and raw onion sharpens as the mixture sits. Grating rather than chopping distributes it more evenly and softens the bite.
- MayonnaisePeriod mayonnaise was made at home from raw yolks and was often thinner than commercial jarred dressing. Add it a spoonful at a time until the mixture just holds together -- enough to bind, not enough to slump out of the bread.
- Bread and butterThe butter is structural, not decorative: a thin film on each slice keeps the moist filling from soaking through. Use it soft enough to spread without tearing thin-cut bread.
- YieldOne cup of filling makes about four sandwiches cut in halves, or a dozen small tea-sandwich fingers with crusts removed.
- KeepingMade-up sandwiches with a mayonnaise-bound meat filling should be kept cold and eaten the same day. The filling itself will hold a day or two refrigerated in a covered dish.
Sandwich books proliferated in America between roughly 1900 and 1920, driven by the fashion for afternoon teas, card parties, picnics and the packed lunch pail, and many of them share this recipe's underlying logic: the household bought or roasted a large joint, ate it hot, ate it cold, and then ground the last of it with something sharp to make it interesting again. Veal was far more common on American tables then than now, and its mildness is exactly why the formula piles on vinegar, mustard, raw onion and a pickle garnish. The technique is the same one that produced ham salad and chicken salad fillings, and the phrase "the desired amount" at the head of the recipe suggests a way of using up what was already in the house rather than a dish planned in advance.