It’s the famous chicken sandwich that gets everyone talking at the Melbourne Cup every year – and now you can recreate it at home.

Celebrity caterer Peter Rowland has been serving his iconic canapé at the race that stops the nation for than 55 years.

His secret to the perfect chicken sandwich? Mr Rowland said it all comes down to making the filling ‘sloppy’.

‘The stuff inside the sandwich must be sloppy. I want it to be sloppy,’ he previously told Good Food.

The 87-year-old – whose famous recipe hasn’t changed since 1962 – said to make his soft white bread, mayonnaise-laden triangles, the chicken breast must be ‘slowly poached’.

His recipe calls for chicken breast (poached and diced), homemade mayonnaise, fresh parsley and chives, white sandwich bread and butter. For a hint of spice, add a pinch of hot paprika or cayenne pepper.

Described as the ‘can’t stop at one’ chicken sandwich, its succulent pieces of chicken are coated in a secret blend of herbed mayonnaise, generously served on soft, fluffy white bread.

However, Mr Rowland said the sandwiches should never be served with crusts.

Next, the bread is lightly spread with butter and then filled to the edges with homemade mayonnaise, which is flecked with chopped chives and parsley.

‘The big secret was, and my tongue’s not in my cheek, put double the amount of mayonnaise that you think you should. That was the big secret of the chicken sandwiches,’ Mr Rowland said.

Previously speaking to 3AW, Mr Rowland said he came up with his own recipe after he was fed up with eating ‘dry’ chicken sandwiches.

‘No one ever made them how I wanted them,’ he said.

‘When we started making them they always tasted dry like airline sandwiches. I said, “look, just put double the amount of mayonnaise in them and make them floppy”.

‘Mayonnaise is the trick, and, of course, a few other things – extra butter. Everyone’s too skimpy on the butter.

‘It was as simple as that and they were fantastic.’

Every year, the Peter Rowland Group serves than 20,000 chicken sandwiches at Melbourne Cup on Tuesday – enough to circle the race track twice.

‘The chef tells me you can run them around the track twice, end-to-end, whatever that means,’ Mr Rowland said.

The group executive chef of Peter Rowland Group, Matthew Haigh, previously told Good Food the chicken sandwich continues to remain ‘timeless’.

‘While some food trends have come and gone, the chicken sandwich has stood the test of time and shows no signs of losing its popularity,’ Mr Haigh said.