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Whole Wheat Sandwiches
Mix chopped salted peanuts with fine grained cottage cheese and spread on circles of buttered whole wheat bread. Brown bread is equally good with this mixture.
A tea-sandwich filling of the interwar type, given in the shorthand of its day: no quantities, no yield, and an assumption that the cook knows what a sandwich circle is. A few points fill in the gaps.
- ProportionsThe recipe gives none. Something in the region of one part chopped salted peanuts to three parts cottage cheese by volume gives a spread that holds together and still tastes of peanut; scale to the number of rounds you want.
- Fine grained cottage cheeseThis means small-curd, and probably a fairly dry one by the standards of the period. Modern tubs are wetter; drain in a sieve for fifteen minutes, or the bread will go soft before the sandwiches reach the table.
- CirclesCut with a biscuit or cookie cutter about two inches across, after spreading or before, as you prefer. The trimmings can go to crumbs or a pudding.
- The butter is structuralButter the bread right to the edge and use it soft, not melted. It is the moisture barrier between a damp cheese filling and the crumb, which is why the instruction says buttered rather than leaving it optional.
- Brown breadThis may mean a dark molasses bread, such as the steamed Boston kind, or simply a darker wholemeal loaf; the recipe distinguishes it from whole wheat but does not say which. Either reading works here, and the steamed sort comes in a cylinder that gives rounds without cutting, sweet against the salt.
- Salted peanutsCocktail peanuts in oil are the closest match. Chop them by hand rather than in a processor, which turns them to paste and oil.
- TimingAssemble no more than an hour ahead, cover with a barely damp towel and refrigerate. These do not survive being made the night before.
Cottage cheese sandwich fillings appear in American cookbooks of the early twentieth century, often promoted as a cheap protein and as a light alternative to meat salads. Pairing it with chopped salted nuts was common: the nuts supplied salt, fat and crunch to a filling that has none of its own. Warm-weather cookery of the period leaned hard on dishes that needed no range time, and a bread-and-cheese plate cut into rounds was the summer luncheon answer for bridge tables and porch suppers. Whole wheat carried a mild health reputation in the same years.