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Dried Beef Sandwiches
The dried beef is shredded fine and mixed with finely chopped fancy pickles with mustard dressing spread on bread, white or brown.
A three-line sandwich formula of the kind sandwich chapters were full of around 1900 — assembly rather than cooking. The only real decisions are the salt level of the beef and what binds the filling.
- Dried beefThis is air-dried, salt-cured beef sliced paper-thin, sold today as chipped or sliced dried beef in jars or vacuum packs. It is aggressively salty; rinsing the slices in cool water and blotting them dry before shredding keeps the sandwich from being inedible with pickle and mustard on top.
- Shredded fineStack the slices, roll them into a cigar and cut across into fine threads, then chop once or twice more. A food processor turns dried beef to paste rather than shreds.
- "Fancy pickles"Probably assorted or mixed sweet-sour pickles rather than a single kind; mustard pickle, chow-chow and mixed gherkin and cauliflower in spiced vinegar would all fit, though the term was also used loosely as a quality grade. Bread-and-butter chips or a good mixed pickle relish give a similar effect; drain them well or the bread will go soggy.
- Mustard dressingIn cookbooks of this period this usually means a cooked or boiled dressing thickened with egg and flour and sharpened with dry mustard rather than bottled yellow mustard, though this page does not say. Mayonnaise whisked with a teaspoon of dry mustard per half cup is the closest quick equivalent.
- ProportionsThe original gives none. About 4 oz shredded dried beef to 2 tablespoons drained chopped pickle and 3 tablespoons dressing makes a spreadable filling for six to eight sandwiches cut in halves or fingers.
- Bread"white or brown" points to a fine-crumbed sandwich loaf or a wholemeal one, sliced thin. The recipe does not mention butter, but buttering to the edges acts as a moisture barrier. Trim the crusts if these are going on a tea table; leave them if they are lunch.
- Making aheadThe filling holds a day in the refrigerator. Assemble no more than an hour or two before serving.
Dried beef was one of the earliest American convenience proteins: cured, dried and sliced thin, it kept without refrigeration and was widely available from grocers by the late nineteenth century, most familiarly in creamed form on toast. Sandwich chapters like this one belong to a specific moment when the sandwich moved from a traveller's makeshift to a fixture of luncheons, teas, picnics and card parties, and cookbooks began printing dozens of one- and two-line variations on the same theme of a spread, a relish and thin bread. The "fancy pickles" called for here reflect the same commercial shelf: mustard pickle and chow-chow could be had ready-made, and pairing them with shop-bought dried beef produced a sandwich requiring no stove at all.