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Mustard and Cress Sandwiches
Bread and butter Mustard and cress Cut some neat slices of bread and butter, and cover them with equal parts of mustard and cress. Cover them with more slices of plain bread and butter. Press them lightly together and cut in neat three-cornered pieces. The long stalks should be cut away from the mustard and cress before it is used for the sandwiches; when it has been very carefully washed, it should be dried on a clean towel.
A sandwich with almost nothing to it, which means the two things it does ask for — dry cress and well-buttered bread — are the whole recipe.
- What mustard and cress isNot a herb but the seedlings of white mustard and garden cress, grown together on damp flannel or soil and cut at an inch or two high. British supermarkets still sell it in punnets, usually as "cress" or "salad cress" (often rape rather than true mustard); in the US, look for microgreen cress or sprout blends. Peppery watercress leaves, stripped from their stems, stand in reasonably well.
- Dry it properlyThis is the hinge. Freshly washed cress holds a surprising amount of water and will turn the crumb to paste within minutes. Spread it in a single layer on a towel, blot the top, and leave it a few minutes before using.
- Butter to the edgesThe butter is doing structural work as a moisture barrier, so it needs to be soft enough to spread thinly right out to the crust rather than dropped on in cold lumps.
- Trimming the stalksCut the seedlings just above the growing medium and discard the lower stems; the pale stalk is stringy and the seed husks cling to it. What you want is the top inch of leaf and tender stem.
- SeasoningThe original does not mention seasoning at all. A little salt and a grind of pepper on the cress is not out of keeping, and a scrape of English mustard on one slice reinforces the flavour the sprouts are named for.
- BreadThe recipe does not specify a bread; a close-textured white sandwich loaf, sliced thin, suits it best. Open, holey artisan bread lets the filling escape and does not cut cleanly into triangles.
- Yield and timingTwo slices of bread give four small triangles. Make them within an hour of serving and keep them covered with a damp cloth.
Mustard and cress belongs to the Victorian and Edwardian tea table, where sandwiches were expected to be thin, crustless and cut small, and where a fair number of them are said to have been vegetable rather than meat. The seedlings were cheap and could be raised on a windowsill in a matter of days, which made them one of the few reliably fresh green things available in a town house through much of the year. The tea sandwich was in any case an obvious place to leave the meat out without anyone feeling short-changed.