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Bridge Sandwiches
Slice white bread and whole wheat bread about 1/4 inch thick. Spread with butter or any desired filling and put a slice of each kind together. Cut into diamonds, spades, etc., then with smaller cutter, cut centers from these. Butter edges of these small centers, reverse sides and press back into space. Sandwiches carrying any symbols such as lodge insignia may be carried out the same way. Further garnishing may be made with sliced pickles, olives, pimientos and candied fruits and angelica.
This is a construction technique rather than a filling recipe: the two-tone effect depends entirely on cutting cleanly and swapping the small centers between the light and dark bread. Everything else is garnish.
- The hinge: cut cold, cut cleanUse bread a day old and well chilled, and press the cutter straight down without twisting. Fresh, soft bread compresses and the reversed centers will not seat flush in their holes.
- Bread thicknessA quarter inch is thinner than standard sandwich slices. Ask for a pullman loaf sliced thin, or cut it yourself from an unsliced loaf with a long serrated knife.
- CuttersCard-suit aspic cutters or small cookie cutters both work; you need two sizes of the same shape, the smaller roughly half the width of the larger, or the inset reads as a smudge rather than a symbol.
- FillingsChoose something stiff and smooth -- seasoned butter, cream cheese, thick ham or egg salad passed through a sieve. Anything loose or wet will squeeze out at the cut edges and stain the contrast.
- Buttering the small centersThe butter on the cut edges is glue, not seasoning. A thin film, applied with a small palette knife, holds the reversed piece in place; too much and it slides.
- AngelicaCandied angelica stem, once common in confectionery work, is now a specialty item sold by baking suppliers. Thin strips of green candied cherry give a similar green accent.
- Holding and yieldCover the finished sandwiches with waxed paper and a damp towel and refrigerate no more than a few hours; the cut edges dry quickly. Yield depends entirely on cutter size and how closely the shapes can be nested on each slice.
- ScrapsCutting shapes from squared slices wastes a fair amount of the bread. The trimmings dry into crumbs or fry into croutons, which is worth planning for before you start.
Bridge teas and card parties drove a whole genre of American recipe writing between the 1920s and the 1950s, and food styled to match the game -- sandwiches, cookies and aspics cut as hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs -- was one of its signatures. The suggestion that the same trick will serve "lodge insignia" places this in the era of the fraternal order and the women's auxiliary, when a hostess might as easily be feeding a Masonic or Eastern Star gathering as a foursome at cards. The appeal here is geometry and sharp contrast, white against whole wheat, which is close to the aesthetic the period's magazines were selling in everything from linoleum to layer cakes.