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Cheese Sandwiches
Chop a half pound of good English cheese quite fine, add to it one tablespoonful of French mustard and work the whole to a smooth paste, spread on very thin slices of buttered bread, trim off the crusts, put two slices together and cut into neat squares. (79)
A cold sandwich filling of two ingredients, so everything depends on the state of the cheese and the choice of mustard.
- English cheeseThis means a firm aged cow's-milk cheese of the Cheddar or Cheshire type, not a soft or blue one. A good farmhouse Cheddar is the closest modern equivalent; avoid anything pre-shredded, which is coated in starch and will not bind into a paste.
- French mustardA prepared, mild, vinegar-based mustard in the Dijon manner, sold ready-mixed. It is not dry English mustard powder, and a tablespoon of powder in place of it would be punishing.
- Working to a pasteHalf a pound of aged cheese chopped fine may not come together readily on its own. Grate it, then pound in a mortar or pulse in a food processor with the mustard until it turns from crumbs to a spreadable mass. A tablespoon of softened butter, though not called for here, helps if the cheese is very dry.
- The hingeEverything must be at cool room temperature, not chilled. Cold cheese stays granular and tears thin bread; warm cheese spreads and then firms again once the sandwiches are made.
- BreadA close-textured white sandwich loaf sliced thin. Butter to the very edges before spreading the cheese, which keeps the bread from going damp, and trim the crusts after filling rather than before so the slices stay square.
- YieldHalf a pound of cheese fills roughly eight to ten sandwiches, which cut into some thirty small squares. That suits a tea tray or a picnic rather than a family lunch; halve it if you want a few.
- Holding themCut squares dry out fast at the edges. Cover with a barely damp cloth or wrap closely and keep cool, and cut no more than an hour or two before serving.
The potted-cheese and cheese-paste tradition is documented in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookery, and it arrives in books like this one as a sandwich filling. A paste that can be worked in a mortar and spread cold needs no range at all. The instruction to use "good English cheese" reads as a period marker. The care over thin slices, trimmed crusts and neat squares belongs to the same decades in which the sandwich was becoming a formal item of afternoon tea rather than plain portable food.