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Spanish Sandwiches
Cut slices of graham bread very thin, butter, and spread with a layer of cottage cheese sprinkled with salt, mustard, paprika and chopped olives.
A cold spread sandwich with no cooking and no measurements at all; the balance is left entirely to the cook. A few notes on the ingredients and proportions.
- Graham breadGraham flour is coarsely ground whole wheat, milled with the bran and germ retained. A dense whole-wheat sandwich loaf is the closest supermarket equivalent; anything labelled "graham" today is usually a sweet cracker and is not what is meant.
- Cut very thinThe instruction matters more than it looks. Whole-wheat bread cut thick overwhelms a soft cheese filling, and thin-cut spread sandwiches of this kind were usually served as tea or luncheon fare rather than as a meal, though the recipe itself does not say. A serrated knife on a day-old loaf, or a chilled loaf, gives clean thin slices.
- Cottage cheeseCottage cheese was commonly drained curd, often drier and firmer than many tubs sold now. If your cheese is loose, drain it in a sieve for half an hour or press out the whey in cheesecloth, or the bread will go soggy within minutes.
- Butter first, then cheeseButtering the bread is a moisture barrier as much as a flavour, which is why it precedes the wet filling. Use butter soft enough to spread without tearing the slice.
- MustardListed alongside salt and paprika as something sprinkled, so dry mustard powder rather than prepared. A scant pinch per sandwich is enough; prepared mustard would add liquid the filling does not want.
- OlivesChopped green olives in brine. Blot them dry after chopping and go easy on the added salt, since the olives bring their own.
- Proportions and yieldThe recipe gives no measurements. As a starting point, about half a cup of drained cottage cheese with two tablespoons of chopped olives will cover roughly four thin slices. Assemble shortly before serving; these do not hold well.
"Spanish" in American cookery of this era rarely meant Spain so much as a signal for something in the register of olives, pimiento or paprika, the same shorthand that produced Spanish rice and Spanish omelette. Cottage cheese was widely promoted in this period as a cheap protein, often made at home from surplus milk, and turns up frequently in meatless sandwich fillings. Graham bread carries its own history, named for Sylvester Graham, the nineteenth-century American dietary reformer who argued for unbolted whole-grain flour; by the time this book was published the name had long outlived direct association with his followers and simply meant whole wheat.