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Wich (Mince boiled mushrooms)
Mince boiled mushrooms and cold beef or tongue together, and spread between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread. Lightly spread the filling with French mustard. Garnish with a pickle.
A two-line filling recipe of the kind that fills early sandwich books: cold roast beef or boiled tongue stretched with mushrooms. The details worth knowing are what "boiled" and "French mustard" meant in 1909, and the fact that nothing here binds the filling.
- Boiled mushroomsSimmer button mushrooms in lightly salted water or stock for 5-8 minutes, then drain very well and cool before mincing. Wet mushrooms will soak the bread within minutes; press them in a sieve or blot them dry.
- Mince means knife-choppedMince -- Chop the meat and mushrooms fine by hand or put them through the coarse plate of a grinder; either would have been understood by "mince" at the time. A food processor turns cold beef into paste and the filling loses all texture.
- There is no binderAs written the mixture is dry crumb and will fall out of the sandwich. A tablespoon of softened butter, or a spoonful of the mushroom cooking liquid reduced to a syrup, per cup of filling holds it together without turning it into a spread.
- French mustardNot the bright yellow American kind. In cookbooks of this period "French mustard" generally meant a prepared mustard made up with vinegar or wine, smoother and sharper than mustard mixed dry at table; a Dijon is the closest supermarket stand-in, though some period "French mustards" were milder and darker than Dijon.
- TongueCooked, peeled beef tongue was a routine cold cut in this period and is still sold at butchers and delis, often labelled lengua. Cold roast beef sliced thick and chopped is the easier substitute.
- The breadThin slices of a close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, buttered to the edges so the filling does not wet it. Crusts were often trimmed for tea sandwiches, though this recipe does not mention them.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; as a working estimate, 4 oz meat and 4 oz mushrooms make about a cup of filling, enough for four rounds cut into quarters. Assemble no more than an hour ahead and keep covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre around the turn of the twentieth century, when afternoon tea, the bridge party and the packed office lunch all wanted the same thing: something portable made from what was already cooked. That is the logic of this entry. Cold beef and boiled tongue were the standing leftovers of a household that roasted and boiled large joints, and mushrooms, by then reliably cultivated and sold both fresh and canned, may well have served to stretch them and add savour. The instruction to spread the mustard on the filling rather than the bread is the one piece of real technique in the recipe, and it belongs to the same thinking as buttering the bread to the edge: everything is arranged to keep moisture off the crumb so the sandwich survives an hour on a plate.