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Raisin Sandwiches
3 ounces cream cheese 2 tablespoons heavy cream 1 1/2 tablespoons raisins, finely chopped 1 teaspoon grated horseradish Brown bread Soften the cheese with cream, add raisins and horseradish and mix well. Spread between thin buttered slices of brown bread.
A tea sandwich of the cream-cheese era, built on the contrast between sweet fruit and hot root. The filling is stiff by design, so it will not soak the thin bread.
- The hinge: keep the filling stiffBeat the cheese and cream only until spreadable, not fluffy. If it slackens, the raisins slide and the bread goes damp within the hour.
- 3 ounces of cream cheeseThat was the standard small foil-wrapped package of the period. Use 3 oz cut from an 8 oz block, at full room temperature so it takes the cream without lumps.
- Heavy creamModern heavy or whipping cream is right. Do not substitute half-and-half; you need the fat to keep the spread from weeping.
- Grated horseradishIn a recipe of this kind this usually means the fresh root, grated. If you use bottled prepared horseradish, note that it is packed in vinegar and brine, so drain it well and taste before you commit the full teaspoon.
- Brown breadIn an American sandwich chapter this may mean either a whole-wheat or graham loaf or the steamed molasses Boston brown bread; the recipe does not say. Either works, but the steamed kind is crumbly and needs to be chilled before slicing.
- Thin slicesSlice about 1/4 inch and butter both faces to the edges. The butter is the moisture barrier, so do not skip it.
- Chop the raisins fineWhole raisins tear thin bread. A few pulses in a processor with a little of the cheese keeps them from balling up.
- Yield and servingRoughly 1/2 cup of filling, enough for 4 to 6 sandwiches trimmed of crusts and cut into fingers or triangles. Assemble no more than two or three hours ahead and keep them covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator.
Cream cheese sandwich fillings multiplied in American cookbooks from the 1900s onward, once cheese in small packages became a reliable grocery item and the afternoon tea sandwich became a fixture of ladies' lunches, bridge parties and receptions. The pattern here is a common one for the genre: soften the cheese with a liquid, then add one sweet element and one sharp one so neither dominates. Raisins with horseradish reads oddly now, but sweet-and-pungent pairings of this kind appear elsewhere in the period, and horseradish was one of the standard ways to get heat into a cold filling.