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Chop half a cup of walnut meats fine and mix with half a cup of Neufchatel cheese. Add a dash of pepper and salt if they seem to require seasoning. Spread between slices of white bread. If desired this sandwich may be further improved by putting between the folds of a crisp lettuce leaf.
A two-ingredient spread that depends almost entirely on the quality of the cheese and the freshness of the nuts. The proportions are equal by volume, which makes it easy to scale.
- Neufchatel is not what it wasIn an American cookbook of this vintage, Neufchatel means a soft, mild fresh cheese sold in small blocks, closer to cream cheese than to the French soft-ripened, bloomy-rind Neufchâtel from Normandy. American-style Neufchatel, sold today as the lower-fat cream cheese brick, is the closest descendant and the right substitute; plain cream cheese works if you thin it slightly.
- Bring the cheese to room temperatureHalf a cup of cheese straight from the refrigerator will tear the bread rather than spread on it. Twenty minutes on the counter, then mash with a fork before the nuts go in.
- Toast the walnutsThe recipe says only "walnut meats," but bagged walnut halves pick up a staleness that ten minutes at 350F on a dry sheet drives off, sharpening the flavor considerably. Cool them fully before chopping or they will soften the cheese.
- Chop, do not grind"Fine" here means a knife-cut dice, not a paste. A food processor will turn walnuts to oily meal in a few seconds and the filling will go grey.
- SeasoningThe "if they seem to require" is a real instruction: taste the mixture before adding anything. A small squeeze of lemon, though not in the original, keeps the spread from tasting flat.
- YieldRoughly a cup of filling, enough for four sandwiches cut in halves, or about sixteen small tea-sandwich fingers with crusts removed.
- Assembly and holdingSpread the filling to the edges and, if you are adding lettuce, keep the leaf dry so the bread does not go limp. Made ahead, the sandwiches keep an hour or two under a barely damp towel; the filling itself holds three or four days covered in the refrigerator.
Nut-and-cheese sandwiches filled a specific gap in turn-of-the-century American entertaining: they were meatless, could be made in the morning for an afternoon at-home or card party, and used the soft fresh cheeses of the period. Neufchatel was among the first of those, made in New York State from the 1870s onward in imitation of the French original, and it was cheaper and less rich than cream cheese. The walnut, meanwhile, was the standard American dessert and tea-table nut of the era, sold in the shell by the pound and cracked at home. The lettuce leaf mentioned at the end can be read as a marker of gentility as much as flavor -- a sandwich "between the folds of a crisp lettuce leaf" was arguably the version you served to guests.