Home › Sandwiches › Cheese Sandwiches
Cheese Sandwiches
Cut very thin slices of rich cheese, lay thin on brown bread, dust lightly with cayenne or paprika, and cover as usual. Or use grated Edam or Parmesan cheese in the same way. Or grate mild domestic cream cheese, mix with chilli sauce or tomato catsup, and spread between either white or brown bread.
Three variations on the plainest of tea sandwiches, written when "cheese sandwich" meant something served cold and cut small rather than griddled in butter. The instructions assume you know the sandwich-maker's basic sequence, so the useful notes are mostly about the cheeses.
- "Rich cheese"The phrase generally indicates a full-cream cheese rather than a skim-milk one; a good farmhouse cheddar is a reasonable equivalent, sliced thin enough to bend without cracking.
- "Mild domestic cream cheese"Not the block cream cheese sold today. The term was used loosely at the time, often for soft fresh cheeses and sometimes for mild domestic pressed cheeses. Since this one is to be grated, a young mild cheddar or Monterey Jack is a sensible reading.
- Edam and ParmesanParmesan was a hard grating cheese; Edam is semi-hard, though the recipe treats it the same way. Grate both fresh; pre-grated dried cheese tastes of nothing between two slices of bread.
- "Cover as usual"The recipe assumes a sequence the reader already knows, most likely buttered bread, filling laid on and the second slice pressed down; trimming and cutting into fingers or triangles was common for small sandwiches but is not specified here.
- Chilli saucePeriod chilli sauce is a thick spiced tomato relish in the ketchup family, not a hot pepper sauce. Use enough to bind the grated cheese into a paste that will spread without tearing the bread.
- Cayenne and paprikaBoth are dusted, not measured -- a light shake over the whole slice. Paprika of the period was usually sweet and mild and used as much for colour as for heat.
- Bread"brown bread" here most likely means a wholemeal or graham loaf, close-grained and firm, rather than a molasses-sweetened steamed loaf. Day-old bread slices thinner and cleaner than fresh.
Cold cheese sandwiches like these belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian tea table, where sandwiches were cut small, often crustless, and served in variety rather than as a meal in themselves. The three versions map onto what an American household could buy: a domestic pressed cheese from the grocer, imported Edam and Parmesan for a more expensive effect, and a bottled tomato relish -- chilli sauce and catsup were among the early commercially bottled condiments. The cayenne or paprika dusting reflects a fondness for a faint, decorative heat on otherwise bland cold food, paprika being valued for its colour as much as its flavour.