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Savory Sandwiches
Blanch and shred 2 ounces almonds and cook in a little butter until delicately browned, stirring constantly. Mix 2 T finely chopped pickles, 1 T Worchestershire sauce, 1 T Chutney, 4 t salt and a few grains of paprika. Pour over almonds and cook about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Work a cream cheese until smooth, and season with salt and pepper. Spread unsweetened crackers evenly with cheese, sprinkle with nuts and put together in pairs.
A church-supper canapé built on fried almonds and cream cheese. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the quantities in the original need a second look before you start.
- The salt is almost certainly a misprintThe salt looks wrong -- "4 t salt" in a mixture holding two tablespoons of pickle and one of Worcestershire would be inedible; four teaspoons is roughly 24 grams. A misprint for 1/4 teaspoon is the likeliest reading, but it is a guess: start with a pinch and season by taste at the end.
- T and tIn this book T is a tablespoon and t a teaspoon. Worcestershire, chutney and chopped pickle are all measured in tablespoons here.
- Two ounces of almondsThat is about 1/3 to 1/2 cup whole almonds, or 55 g. Blanching means a brief dip in boiling water, around a minute, so the skins slip off; shredding means splitting and slivering them lengthwise, which is what packaged slivered almonds already are.
- Watch the almonds, not the clockThis is the hinge. Blanched almonds go from pale to burnt in well under a minute in hot butter, and they keep cooking off the heat. Pull them when they are just golden.
- The wet stage is short by designTwo minutes with the pickle and sauces is enough to drive off most of the liquid and glaze the nuts. Longer and they soften, which defeats the point of the crisp layer against the cheese.
- Cream cheeseThe small 3-ounce bar was a common package size in this period; an 8-ounce brick is the usual one now. "Work until smooth" means beaten at room temperature — cold cheese tears crackers.
- Unsweetened crackersA plain soda or water cracker, not a sweet biscuit. Modern saltines work, though something sturdier holds the filling better.
- Assemble lateThe chutney and pickle carry enough moisture to soften crackers within an hour. Cook the nuts and beat the cheese ahead, then put the sandwiches together shortly before serving. Two ounces of almonds and a small package of cheese fills roughly 12 to 15 pairs.
Savory sandwiches like this one belong to the era when the sandwich had detached itself from lunch and become a party food — thin, small, meant to be eaten standing up with tea or punch. Community cookbooks compiled by church societies in the early twentieth century often devote space to sandwiches, filled with combinations of cream cheese, chopped nuts, olives, pimento and bottled sauces. The reliance on Worcestershire and chutney here is telling: both were shelf-stable commercial products by then, and both were shorthand for a fashionable Anglo-Indian sharpness that a home kitchen could buy rather than build. Cream cheese, sold in small foil-wrapped bars from the 1880s onward, gave cooks a spreadable base that needed no cooking, and it turns up as the binder for a large share of these recipes.