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Striped Bread Sandwiches
Make an equal number of white bread and brown bread sandwiches; place sandwiches together in alternating colors. Wrap in damp cheese cloth and press over night. Cut in thin slices, then in strips.
When cut, these sandwiches give the appearance of marbled bread.
An assembly recipe rather than a cooked one: the whole point is the cross-section, so everything depends on tight, even layers and a long press. A few things the original assumes you already know.
- The hinge: press cold and press flatWrap the stack in damp (not wet) cheesecloth, set it on a tray, lay a board on top and weight it with a few cans. Do this in the refrigerator rather than on a counter overnight, particularly if the filling contains eggs, fish or meat.
- No filling is specifiedA soft, fat-based spread that glues the layers and does not weep suits this kind of sandwich: butter creamed with anchovy, cream cheese with chopped nuts or olives, or a smooth ham or chicken paste. Anything watery, such as sliced tomato or dressed salad, will soak the bread and destroy the stripe.
- "Brown bread"This may mean a graham or whole-wheat loaf, though in a Boston book of this date the steamed molasses brown bread, which was itself commonly sliced thin for sandwiches, cannot be ruled out. Whichever you use, a fine-crumbed loaf lets the two colours slice cleanly.
- Buy unsliced loavesThe contrast reads best with layers about a quarter inch thick, thinner than commercial slicing. Square sandwich loaves cut lengthwise give the longest, most uniform strips.
- Trim the crusts before pressingThe recipe does not say either way, but squaring off the stack while it is still soft gives clean edges; trimming afterwards tears the layers apart.
- CuttingUse a long serrated knife, wiped between cuts, and cut across the layers so each slice shows the alternating bands. Slice the pressed block first, then cut each slice into strips or fingers.
- Yield and servingThe yield depends entirely on how thin you slice and how narrow the strips are. Serve the day they are cut; keep them covered with a damp cloth and refrigerated until then, or the exposed edges dry out.
Lowney's Cook Book was published in 1907 by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like most house cookbooks of the period it covers the whole domestic repertoire rather than just the firm's product. Fancy sandwiches of this sort belonged to the ladies' luncheon, the card party and the afternoon tea: the light, cold, decorative end of a meal that a hostess could prepare in advance. The striped or ribbon sandwich, along with its cousins the rolled pinwheel and the checkerboard, depended entirely on visual effect, and its rise is generally traced to the arrival of soft, fine-grained commercial pan loaves that could be sliced thin without crumbling. The overnight press under a damp cloth is one solution to the same problem cooks still face: how to keep cut bread from drying while making it firm enough to slice.