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Chicken Sandwiches
Chop cold chicken very fine and soften it to a paste with butter and cream. Season with salt and white pepper and spread on thin graham or white bread. Mushrooms added to the paste, gives it a spicy flavor. They should be. stewed and chopped fine. :
A potted-chicken spread rather than a sliced sandwich, and the proportions are left entirely to the cook. The texture is the whole point: it should be spreadable enough not to tear thin bread.
- Working proportionsAbout 1 cup finely chopped cooked chicken to 2 tablespoons softened butter and 1-2 tablespoons cream gives a paste that spreads without tearing. Add the cream last, a teaspoon at a time.
- Chop, do not blendA food processor turns cooked breast into a pasty mass in seconds. Pulse briefly or chop by hand so the meat still has some grain.
- Graham breadHere this means whole wheat bread of the Graham type, coarser than modern sandwich wheat. Any dense whole wheat loaf, thinly sliced, is the right substitute.
- White pepperUsually chosen in pale fillings so the flecks do not show. Its flavour differs from black pepper rather than simply being milder, so season to taste.
- The mushrooms"Stewed" here means cooked down in butter or a little stock until they give up their liquid and it evaporates. Wet mushrooms will loosen the paste and make the bread soggy.
- Butter the bread tooA thin film of butter on the bread slices keeps the moisture in the filling from soaking through, which matters if the sandwiches are made more than an hour ahead.
- Yield and holdingThe quantity above fills about six to eight small sandwiches. Keep the paste refrigerated and use it within two days; it is cooked meat softened with dairy and will not keep longer.
Sandwiches of this kind belong to the late-nineteenth-century vogue for potted and paste fillings, which let a household use up the remains of a roast fowl in a form suitable for afternoon tea, receptions and picnics rather than the dinner table. Butter-and-cream pastes were the domestic cousin of commercial potted meats then sold in jars, and cookbooks of the period return to them constantly because they spread thinly, hold their shape when the crusts are cut away, and can be made from meat that is already cold. The mention of graham bread as an alternative reflects the continuing influence of Sylvester Graham's mid-century advocacy of coarse whole-meal flour, by then arguably less a health crusade than simply a familiar kind of loaf. Mushrooms described as giving a "spicy" flavor may be a reminder that the word could be used loosely for anything savory and aromatic, not strictly for heat or spice.