Paste sandwiches anyone?

Here’s an illustration from the 1935  Round-the-Clock cookery book, compiled by Mrs Wise and published ‘issued from’ The Fleetway House, Farringdon street, London. it is a strange book as the pages are so thick they are almost like cardboard, and really rough. Maybe it was cheap!

I’m not sure I would fancy paste sandwiches, but maybe we would call them paté sandwiches today. There are several recipes for paste, bloater paste, made from bloaters, hard-boiled eggs, butter and nutmeg; cheap savoury paste made with ox liver, stewing steak, fat pork and both anchovy sauce and anchovy essence; economical sandwich paste made from lentils, onion, grated cheese, curry powder, butter, dried mint and tomato ketchup… I think I’ll reserve judgement on that! There is also a recipe for sardine paste…

I’ve looked through the book and cannot find a recipe for the savoury jellies… I wonder why that is? I guess they would be made with aspic or gelatine, and there are two recipes for jellied fish, including Cornish herrings… Not to modern tastes!

The last illustration on the page is for sausage roly-poly; a mixture of beef and pork sausage meat is spread on a piece of grease-proof paper, spread with mustard, arranged with halves of hard-boiled egg and strips of cooked ham or any meat; the whole thing is rolled into a roll and then wrapped in a pudding cloth and boiled for two hours. When it comes out of the pot, the cloth should be retied tightly round it and then the whole thing pressed between two plates with a flat-iron on top. Once it is sufficiently pressed it should be glazed with a gelatine sauce… As with so many of these old recipes, was it really worth it? Would sausage and egg sandwiches not be easier and just as tasty?