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Favorite Sandwiches
Cream two tablespoons butter, add one half cup grated American cheese, two tablespoons anchovy essence, one fourth teaspoon each of paprika and mustard, and one half cup finely chopped olives. Season with salt and spread between thin slices of bread.
A spread rather than a sandwich in the modern sense, and it depends entirely on getting the butter soft enough to carry everything else. A few of the ingredient names have drifted since 1907.
- American cheeseIn 1907 this meant plain domestic factory cheddar, not processed slices. Use a firm, sharp yellow cheddar and grate it fine on the smallest holes so it disappears into the butter.
- Anchovy essenceA thin, salty anchovy sauce; bottled anchovy sauces and essences are still made by a few British firms. Anchovy paste from a tube works as a substitute, but it is thicker and saltier, so start with one teaspoon and taste before adding more.
- Salt last, if at allBetween the anchovy, the cheese and brined olives, the mixture is usually salty enough already. Taste before following the instruction to season.
- Butter temperatureCream the butter at proper room temperature, soft enough to whip but not oily. Cold butter will not take the cheese and the spread will tear the bread.
- OlivesMost likely green olives in brine. Drain and blot them dry after chopping, or the liquid will loosen the spread and soak the bread.
- MustardDry mustard powder, not prepared mustard from a jar. If using prepared, use about three times as much and expect a looser mixture.
- Yield and servingMakes roughly a cup of spread, enough for eight to ten small sandwiches on thin white bread; sandwiches of this kind were often served crustless and cut in triangles or fingers, though this recipe does not say so. It holds two days covered in the refrigerator; bring back to room temperature before spreading.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907), compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, appeared at the height of the American sandwich vogue, when the tea table and the ladies' luncheon demanded dozens of thin, crustless, highly seasoned varieties, filed in cookbooks by the page. Anchovy essence turns up constantly in these lists, a legacy of the English fish sauces that had long stood on Victorian sideboards and the cheapest way to give a bland butter spread depth and salt. Combining it with cheese, paprika and chopped olives puts this squarely in the "savoury" tradition, the sharp, salty mouthful served at the end of an English dinner or on an American card-party plate.