The sortes virgilianae is a form of divination that treats Virgil’s Aeneid as the embodiment of all wisdom. Ask a question, open the book to a random page, and the first words you lay eyes on are supposed to offer profound insight. I first got into this when I was studying Latin in highschool. It seemed like less work than some of the other Roman fortune-telling methods, with no fasting beforehand, and no steaming entrails to decipher.

I came up with the domain name “Fine Furious Life” by playing the sortes virgilianae with an anthology of MFK Fisher. I opened it up and there the words were, staring me in the face. How do you argue with MFK Fisher? You don’t.

I have a lot of fondness and respect for Ms. Fisher, but, for reasons that would bore everyone to tears and raise a few eyebrows, too, I like her writing less and less as I grow older. Still, she is a Dear Old Friend, and immersing myself in one of her books feels like coming home.

A few days ago I brought home from the library A Stew Or A Story, a collection of minor essays for the die-hard Fisher fan who’s exhausted everything else. By force of habit, I selected a page at random and let my eyes fall wherever they chose.

The passage I alighted on put definitively to rest the bothersome little matter of a sandwich recipe. For years, I’d been troubled by a somewhat indelicate method, attributed to MFK Fisher, for preparing a ham-and-cheese sandwich. If you’re wondering why anybody would even need a recipe to prepare what is probably the simplest dish there is, well, this one includes an unusual step: wrapping the sandwich in cling film and then sitting on it for an hour.

Apocryphal, surely. MFK wouldn’t have written that…would she?

Well, yes and no. The passage I arrived at by chance describes the method but does not put it in a recipe format.

The best sandwich I have ever made, not to mention eaten countless times, is known in our family as a “Railroad.” I think this is because I got its beginning idea from the ham sandwiches served in French railroad stations…and by now the family Railroad is quite impressive, mainly because I insist that it be sat upon. This rite delights any picknickers under eighty-seven years of age, of course, and it is solemnly admitted by anyone who has ever eaten a Railroad that the sitting does something mysterious and essential to its special flavor.

And there you have it! Just when you think you’re coming home, nothing is as it seems: count on MFK Fisher to throw you a curveball. (My use of a baseball metaphor when I despise spectator sports of all kinds, essentially acted like an ostrich during the Olympics and have been known to refer to the New York Mets as a football team is, I don’t know, a function of stress and fatigue.)

The original version omits the cheese, calls for a cloth wrapping in lieu of cling film and reduces squashing time to fifteen minutes. Crucially, it recommends that the squasher be carefully vetted:

Choosing the sitter can become something of a rite too, and it is agreed that with a good fresh loaf of sourdough he or she can weigh between 100 and 160 pounds, but that anyone heavier is liable to flatten things too much.

“The Pleasures Of Picnics” first appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in 1957. And the sandwich pictured–the Godfather Hero #2–first appeared in a 5th Ave deli this lunchtime, shortly to disappear into my mouth.

I’m not telling you if I sat on it first.

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