Sandwich Tribunal Presents: A Guy and the Kaiser
When I first started researching this month’s final sandwich, an Austrian tidbit called “Kaiser’s Jagdproviant” (loosely translated as “The Emperor’s hunting provisions”), I ran into an issue. There just isn’t a whole lot of information out there about the sandwich. That is, there are plenty of results to a basic Google search. But those results are all the same.
“Kaiser Jagdproviant is a finger sandwich from Austrian cuisine made with ham, pickles, egg and cheese,” says the Wikipedia article. “The sandwich has its origins in the Kaiser’s court. Sometimes added to the basic recipe are cottage cheese, butter, mustard, anchovy paste and chives. It was also served for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial inauguration, which included other foods of Austrian origin too, like bockwurst, weisswurst and bratwurst.” These exact phrases are repeated on the several other wikis with articles on the sandwich, and were in turn apparently cribbed from a 2003 San Francisco Chronicle (online at sfgate.com) article about the inauguration.
There was also a certain monotony to the small number of online recipes I was able to find, which includes 2 in the Polish language. I also found that there was a recipe printed in an extremely expensive 4-volume “World Cookbook” that also matched the same patterns I saw in the other recipes.
Of course there are slight variations between these recipes. My point is that they seem more like “better make sure I don’t plagiarize” alterations than the kind of natural variance you’d see with a legitimate folk recipe.
I got suspicious. It wouldn’t be too terribly difficult, if you wanted to prank me, to put a bunk sandwich on the WIkipedia List of Sandwiches, throw up a couple of fake stories about it online, and then point and laugh at Jim the Big Idiot as he makes and consumes your Sandwich of Lies. Heck, I’ve probably already written about fake sandwiches. I guess I don’t care too much if you do that as long as the sandwich is tasty enough. It’s not like I’m the Blue Fairy of sandwiches and my blessing will suddenly breathe life into your bogus hoagie. But still, I’m not gonna make it easy for you.
Paranoid? Me? Why, what have you heard?
So since the one fact that all these sources seemed to agree on was that the sandwich was served at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s inauguration luncheon, I thought I’d reach out to someone I figured for sure must have been there on the scene.
Sadly, Arnold Schwarzenegger did not answer me on Twitter. Clearly he does not understand the importance of the research I’m doing here. However, a friend of mine told me that he has often responded to posts on the subreddit dedicated to him, /r/ArnoldSchwarzenegger, so I reached out there as well. I also checked in with some Austrian friends of mine. None of them had ever heard of the sandwich, and Arnold did not reply either on his subreddit or when I contacted him through his newsletter (which is great and wholesome and you should subscribe if that kind of thing interests you).
Some of the redditors who’d read my thread reached out to contacts on their own and eventually found a food historian who confirmed that the sandwich was real, and not some marketing trick dreamed up by a catering company in 2003 for the inauguration.
So despite the fact that Micheline Maynard tweeted this confirmation on April 1st, I suppose I must accept the actual real-life existence of this sandwich. The version I made followed the recipe in the image I posted above somewhat closely. I used a Damato’s baguette, which was maybe 16 or 18 inches in length, and had to cut off both ends in order to fully scoop out the crumb. The recipe above made about twice as much filling as I needed to stuff the bread to bulging.
The bread loaf then gets chilled overnight to set the filling, and cut into 1″ thick slices for serving.
It’s a bit of an edge case, but I suppose I feel OK calling this a sandwich. Still, there’s a nice sharp flavor from the mustard, which is amplified by the salty umami of the anchovy paste. I used Gruyere cheese, and between the anchovy paste and the Gruyere, the roasted chicken and the ham and the egg and cottage cheese, I can’t help feeling this sandwich would be improved by increasing the amount of pickles, something acidic to cut through all that rich meatiness.
It’s also quite dense for a “finger food.” The presence of some crisp vegetable matter, diced celery perhaps, would help break up the textural monotony. Failing that, it could be served with a relish tray–pickles, olives, salad. In any case, this one baguette makes a week’s worth of lunches for a couple of people, minimum, with or without the pickles and vegetables on the side.
There is more information and descriptions about the making of the sandwich in the video above, as well as a somewhat belligerent fake interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Beware: he is fickle and tricksy and his sandwich opinions cannot be trusted.
I like sandwiches.
I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great
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