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Some Kitchen Kinks: Sandwiches
Cheese Sandwiches.
Mash or grate American cheese, add salt, a few drops of vinegar and paprika, and a speck of mustard.
Mix thoroughly and spread between thin slices of bread.
Cheese and Anchovy Sandwiches.
To the mixture mentioned in the preceding recipe, add a little anchovy essence. Sardines mashed or rubbed into a paste or any other fish paste may be used in a similar way.
Cuban Sandwiches.
This sandwich may be described as a kind of club sandwich with cheese.
It is usually made large so that it is necessary to eat it with a knife and fork. It may be made in such proportions as to supply a large amount of nourishment.
Cut the crusts from slices of bread.
Between two slices lay first lettuce with a little salad dressing or salt on it, then a slice of soft mild cheese and finally thin slices of dill pickles or a little chopped pickle.
Toasted Cheese Sandwiches.
Plain bread and butter sandwiches with fairly thick slices of cheese put between the slices are frequently toasted, and on picnics, or at chafing dish suppers, are often browned in a pan in which bacon has just been fried.
CHEESE PASTRY, CHEESE SWEETS, AND SIMILAR DISHES In the foregoing pages a large number of recipes have been included in which cheese is combined with materials without cooking, as in salads, or used in cooked dishes of creamy or custard-like consistency, as in soufflés and Welsh rabbit or in combination with vegetables or cereals, such as rice. There are a number of cheese dishes of quite different character in which the cheese is combined with dough, batter, or pastry in various ways, and a number of dishes in which cheese or cheese curd is used in combinations suitable for dessert.
Such sweet dishes were once much more common than they are to-day, as reference to old cookery books will show, but some of them are well worth retaining.
In cheese sweets, flavor and richness are both contributed by the cheese.
When cheese is used in pastry or dough it may serve simply as a flavor, as in cheese sticks or cheese straws, or it may wholly or in part replace with its fat the usual shortening, as butter or other fat, and with its protein (casein) the protein (albumin) of eggs. As an illustration of such a use of cheese, cheese gingerbread may be cited.
Using cheese in this way is often an economy when eggs are scarce.
Better results will be obtained if soft cheese is used which can be worked into the dough in much the same way as butter or other shortening. To those who like cheese the flavor which it imparts would be an advantage. However, if a very mild cheese is used in combination with molasses or spice the dish differs a little in flavor from one prepared in the usual way.
Cheese Biscuit No. I. 2 cupsful of flour. 4 teaspoonsful of baking powder. 2 tablespoonsful of lard or butter. 7% of a cup of milk. 1/4 teaspoonful of salt.
Grated cheese sufficient to give desired flavor.
Mix all the ingredients excepting the cheese as for baking powder biscuits. Roll thin, divide into two parts, sprinkle one half with grated cheese, lay the other half of the APPENDIX dough over the cheese, cut out with a small cutter, and bake.
Cheese Biscuit No. II. ¼ pound of soft cheese. 2 cupsful of flour. 1 cupful of water. 4 teaspoonsful of baking powder. 11½ teaspoonsful of salt.
Mix and sift the dry ingredients, then work in the cheese with a fork or with the fingers, and add the water gradually. The approximate amount of water has been given; it it impossible to give the exact amount, as flour differs in its capacity for taking up moisture. Toss the dough on a floured board and roll out and cut with a biscuit cutter. Place in a buttered pan and bake in a quick oven from 12 to 15 minutes. The biscuit may be sprinkled with cheese before being put into the oven.
If the cheese is sufficiently soft it can be measured just as butter is.
This recipe, then, would call for ½ cupful.
Cheese Drops. 2½ tablespoonsful of milk. 1 teaspoonful of butter. 11/4 cupsful of flour. 1 2 1 teaspoonful of salt. egg. tablespoonsful of grated Parmesan cheese or dry American cheese. Heat the butter and milk to boiling point, add the flour and the salt and stir thoroughly. Remove from the fire, add the egg and cheese and stir until well mixed. When cold, drop in small pieces in deep fat and brown. This makes a good addition to any clear soup or to consommé.
Cheese Wafers. cheese is melted. Serve with soup or salad.
Cheese Relish.
Spread bread which has been toasted or fried in deep fat with grated cheese, or with grated cheese mixed with a little mustard, then heat in the oven until the cheese is melted.
This may be served with salad, or as a relish to give flavor to some dish such as boiled rice or hominy, which has no very marked flavor.
Cheese Straws.
Roll out plain or puff paste until one-fourth of an inch thick. Spread one-half of it with grated cheese.
Fold over the other half and roll out again. Repeat the process three or four times. Cut into strips and bake.
Serve with soup or salad.
Salad Biscuit. 1/2 pound of cheese. 2 cupsful of flour. 4 teaspoonsful of baking powder. 11½ teaspoonsful of salt. 1 cupful of water.
Mix as for cheese biscuits No. I or No. II, depending on whether the cheese is hard or soft.
Cheese Gingerbread No. I. 1 cupful of molasses. 4 ounces of cheese. 1 teaspoonful of soda. ½ cupful of water. 2 cupsful of flour. 2 teaspoonsful of ginger. ½ teaspoonful salt.
Heat the molasses and the cheese in a double boiler until the cheese is melted. Add the soda and stir vigorously. Mix and sift dry ingredients and add them to the molasses and cheese alternately with the water.
Bake 15 minutes in small buttered Spread grated cheese on thin crackers, heat in the oven until the tins, Cheese Gingerbread No. II. ½ cupful of molasses. ½ cupful of sugar. 4 ounces of cheese. 2 cupsful of flour. 1 teaspoonful of soda. 2 teaspoonsful of ginger. 1/2 teaspoonful of salt. 3/4 cupful of water.
Rub the cheese and the sugar together. Add the molasses. Mix and sift the dry ingredients and add them to the cheese mixture alternately with the water.
Cheese Custard. 1 cupful of grated cheese. ½ cupful of cream or rich milk.
A run of cheese cookery from a general household manual: four sandwiches, then a group of biscuits, fried drops, straws and molasses gingerbreads built on cheese. The measurements were set in an era when "American cheese" meant a young factory Cheddar, and several of the numbers need interpretation before you bake.
- American cheeseThroughout this section it means plain factory-made Cheddar, not processed slices. Use a mild young Cheddar; where the text calls for "soft cheese" that can be "measured just as butter," a fresh farmer's cheese or a very young, moist Cheddar is closer than anything vacuum-packed.
- A quick ovenFor the cheese biscuits, roughly 425-450F. The 12 to 15 minutes given suits that heat; the recipe gives no thickness for No. II, and No. I directs that the dough be rolled thin.
- The gingerbreadsNo temperature is given. Molasses gingerbread baked in small tins wants a moderate oven, 350F, and the stated 15 minutes suits gem pans or muffin tins rather than a loaf. Gingerbread No. II gives no baking instruction at all; treat it as No. I.
- Melting cheese into molassesThe hinge of Gingerbread No. I. Keep it in the double boiler and off direct heat, or the casein tightens into strings that will not disperse into the batter. Stir the soda in while the mixture is hot and it will foam up sharply; that is expected.
- Ambiguous quantitiesThe milk in Cheese Biscuit No. I still reads "7% of a cup," which is garbled; the salt figures in Biscuit No. II and Salad Biscuit and the milk in Cheese Drops match the printed page as now given. Biscuit No. II and Salad Biscuit both call for a cupful of water to two cups of flour, and the author warns that no exact amount can be given, so add the liquid by feel.
- Cheese Drops are chouxButter and milk boiled, flour beaten in, then egg and cheese off the heat: a small pâte à choux. Fry at 365-375F until they are hollow and dry inside, not merely browned, or the centres stay raw. Drop them into the soup at table so they keep some crispness.
- Cheese strawsRolling and folding grated cheese into the paste three or four times is a rough laminating method. Chill the dough between folds so the fat does not smear. The recipe gives neither temperature nor time; a hot oven of about 400F for 10-12 minutes is a modern working suggestion, not the book's.
- Toasted and Cuban sandwichesThe browning "in a pan in which bacon has just been fried" is the whole point of the toasted version; a lightly greased skillet over medium heat, weighted, does the same work. The Cuban sandwich here is a lettuce-and-pickle club, not the pressed pork sandwich of the same name.
- Anchovy essenceA commercial bottled extract of salted anchovy, now uncommon. Anchovy paste is the direct substitute; start with a quarter teaspoon to a cup of cheese, since it carries a good deal of salt.
Cheese cookery of this kind belongs to the period when American households were being taught to treat cheese as a protein food rather than a relish. The author's aside is the telling part: cheese "may wholly or in part replace with its fat the usual shortening... and with its protein (casein) the protein (albumin) of eggs," which the text calls "often an economy when eggs are scarce." That is the language of early nutritional science filtering into domestic manuals. Cheese gingerbread and cheese custard sit in a much older tradition of sweet cheese dishes that the writer himself notes were "once much more common" - a tradition they resemble in English cheesecakes and curd tarts, in which fresh curd was a dessert ingredient.