Home › Meat › Windsor Sandwich
Windsor Sandwich
One cupful of cold boiled chicken chopped fine, a teaspoonful of finely chopped onion, a half teaspoonful of finely chopped chives. Salt and pepper to taste, moisten with a little mayonnaise dressing, mix well, and spread on thin slices of toasted bread. Cover with another slice of toasted bread, cut in halves, and garnish with a radish.
A straightforward chicken salad sandwich from the era when cold roast fowl was a standing leftover in most kitchens. Two details are worth attention: the quantity of raw onion, and the toast.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A cupful of chopped chicken will fill roughly two sandwiches, cut into four halves as directed here; that is about the meat from one large breast.
- Onion in proportionA full teaspoon of raw onion to one cup of chicken reads mild but is assertive once the filling sits. If the sandwiches are made ahead, use half and taste, since raw allium sharpens as it stands in mayonnaise.
- ChivesFresh chives were a kitchen-garden herb assumed to be at hand. Dried chives contribute almost nothing here; if fresh are unavailable, the green tops of a scallion are closer in flavour than the dried product.
- Mayonnaise dressing"Mayonnaise dressing" in books of this period usually indicates an emulsified mayonnaise, though the term was sometimes applied loosely to cooked salad dressings as well. Add it a spoonful at a time until the filling just holds together, not until it is wet, or toasted bread will collapse.
- Toast on both sidesBoth slices are toasted. Let the toast cool before filling so steam does not soften it, and assemble immediately before serving.
- Thin slices"Thin" here means cut by hand from an unsliced loaf, thinner than a modern commercial slice. A firm white sandwich loaf cut around a quarter inch thick suits the instruction; the recipe says nothing about trimming crusts.
- The radish garnishRadishes cut into rosettes and dropped in ice water to open were a familiar garnish of the period. It is decoration rather than seasoning and can be left off without loss.
Dishes named Windsor after the royal residence proliferated in Anglo-American cookery from the late nineteenth century onward, and the name generally signals nothing more than borrowed prestige: Windsor soup, Windsor pudding and Windsor sandwiches share no common ingredient. This one belongs to the period around the turn of the twentieth century, when small sandwich manuals proliferated and the sandwich moved from a working lunch to a fixture of afternoon teas and card parties. The recipe's real premise is thrift, since it assumes a household with cold boiled chicken already on hand, along with a garden bed of chives and radishes and a cook willing to chop everything fine by knife. Mayonnaise appears here as a matter of course, an indication of how well established the emulsion was in American home kitchens.