The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #177: Herb-Glazed Sandwiches

Howdy Jigglers! Today I bring you Herb-Glazed Sandwiches, a recipe straight out of the annals of tea party history and, frankly, one of the most interestingly strange ideas from The Joys of Jell-O. This one has haunted me for a long time, but I didn't have any other inspiration for what to make for lunch last weekend, so I figured I had no excuse not to make these. The recipe basically involves covering one of a number of savory open-faced sanwich variations with a tangy spiced gelatin glaze and chilling until firm.
 

I really liked the idea of the corned beef and sauerkraut sandwich, as well as the liver pate and egg, but ultimately I went with the roast beef and tomato to keep things simple. If you want to see the results of the chicken and bacon option, see this blog post from Mid-Century Menu.

This really is a simple recipe to follow: put some herbs on the stove to simmer, strain your mixture and add gelatin and more spices, then chill until syrupy. In the meantime, construct your sandwiches, then pour the gelatin over once it's ready. Everything goes into the fridge for a while, and voila--herb-glazed sandwiches. The only tricky part is covering the sandwiches with the glaze. It likes to slip off, which makes it difficult to coat the entire sandwich surface, but it's not a big deal.

In my case, I altered the recipe just slightly. I used unflavored gelatin and a generous splash of lemon extract in place of Jell-O so it wouldn't turn out sweet. I also omitted the dill and multiplied the cayenne by eight or so due to taste preferences. For the sandwiches themselves, I used multi-grain bread with no butter because that's what I had, and for the same reason I arranged some sliced cherry and cocktail tomatoes on the sandwiches instead of big slicers. I think it turned out a little mid-mod, don't you think?

Despite the foreignness of the idea of this recipe, the sandwiches taste pretty good. The glaze acts like a slightly jigglier mustard with its vinegar and spices, and it's hard to go wrong with roast beef and tomato. Even with an overly zealous amount of cayenne, though, the spiciest part of the whole thing was the horseradish by far, and I had spread it out as thin as it could get. The only really disappointing part, though, was that I didn't taste the herb flavors too clearly.

The sandwiches do look nice. They of course look shiny and wet, but that's fetching in its way.

As you can see, in my experience the quantity of glaze yielded by this recipe is just enough for eight sandwiches, although that will vary depending on bread size.

There are a few further alterations I would make to this recipe, were I to make it again (and who knows!): I would use the juice of one lemon in place of the lemon extract and one tablespoon of the vinegar, I would add another bay leaf and some more peppercorns and simmer all of that for fifteen or twenty minutes to really get their flavor out, I would go out of my way to make sure the bread was buttered, and, if I were serving these all at once to family or guests, I would toast the bread before assembling the sandwiches. 

After four days the sandwiches start to get soggy, but they hold up remarkably well before that, in part thanks to the preservative powers of gelatin. All in all, this is quite the success in the savory gelatin category, which makes it the first savory recipe I've done from TJOJ that has even remotely worked. Congrats, General Foods!