Mmm-mmm-mmm-America

I'm not sure if Fanny ever went anywhere near America, but of course by the time she was pulling the partwork together in the 1970s, America was coming over here with a vengeance. Or at least the food was. So, Fanny being Fanny, she had to include a nod to our Stateside cousins on her culinary ladder, and the American Club, or 'three-decker', Sandwich appears to be it! She scarcely needs to give instructions for it, but simply cannot help herself...

According to Fanny, and according to generally accepted patterns, the American Club Sandwich should be made with toast, sliced tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, lettuce hearts, real mayonnaise, thinly sliced mixed brown and white chicken flesh and bacon. This appears to be the reason Fanny feels the need to explain it however, as according to her, what can be found in 'less reputable restaurants' is generally anything but!

Wherever Fanny has been tucking into her Club Sandwiches, she seems to have been served 'revolting bottled wallpaper paste masquerading as mayonnaise'. She probably wouldn't be best pleased with my jar of Hellmans then? It is labelled as 'real' mayonnaise however. It seems to get worse, her sandwiches have contained rather tatty bits of outsized lettuce. That's not the worst of it, the chicken has been replaced with scraps of rabbit and one or two rag, tag and bobtails of the coarsest streaky bacon. I'm sticking with cheese.

Fanny reckons, if made well, the Club Sandwich is one of the most filling and most delicious you are likely to come across. The toast must be made fast under a pre-heated and very fierce grill or it will fly apart when handled and somehow constitute a peril 'once again' for people with bought teeth. Luckily I still have all my own, but although my toast is made fast, it is made in the toaster.

As I'm avoiding the chicken and the bacon, I need not pay heed to Fanny's advice that they be economically used, with the chicken the merest shards from the carcass and the bacon definitely not in brine. My cheese slices are fresh from the pack, and on offer (two for £2) at the supermarket, surely that will do. Fanny might approve after all, she says at the end of the day practically anything can be made to make a Club Sandwich. Being American, they simply cannot be considered to be 'classic' and therefore we can do anything we like with them. Thanks y'all.