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Cheese Filling for Sandwiches
2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 cup milk. 1/4 teaspoon mustard Salt and paprika 1 cup grated cheese Melt the butter; stir in the flour; then add the milk gradually and let it cook until a thick paste is formed. Take from the fire; add the seasoning; work in the grated cheese and set away until needed. Except in very warm weather this will keep a week.
A thick cheese béchamel used cold as a sandwich spread rather than a hot sauce. The proportions are sound; only the storage advice needs rewriting.
- Ignore the keeping timeA cooked milk-and-cheese paste held at room temperature for a week is a straightforward risk from Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus, neither of which announces itself by smell. Refrigerate it covered and use it within three or four days.
- Mustard means dry mustardIn American cookbooks of this period an unqualified "mustard" in a measured spoonful is usually the powder, not the prepared jar. Use 1/4 teaspoon of mustard powder; if substituting prepared mustard, use about a teaspoon and expect a thinner, more vinegary result.
- The cheese"Grated cheese" in a book of this kind most likely means a firm store cheese, close to a sharp Cheddar. One cup grated is roughly 3 to 4 oz. Add it off the heat, as the recipe says, so it melts without breaking into oil and curd.
- Cook the flour firstLet the butter and flour bubble together for a minute before the milk goes in, or the paste keeps a raw, pasty edge that is much more noticeable cold than hot.
- Aim for very thickThis is 2 tablespoons each of butter and flour to a single cup of milk, stiffer than a pouring sauce. Cook it until a spoon drawn through leaves a clean track, otherwise the chilled spread will slump out of the sandwich.
- SpreadingIt sets firm in the refrigerator. Let it stand fifteen minutes at room temperature, or beat it briefly, before spreading on the bread.
- YieldSomething over a cup of filling, enough for several sandwiches. The two slices of bread and two lettuce leaves at the end are not part of the filling; they read as an assembly note, though they may equally belong to a following recipe.
Cooked cheese spreads of this kind sit between two older traditions: the potted cheese of English housekeeping, where grated cheese was pounded with butter and sealed under a layer of more butter, and the Welsh rarebit, a thickened cheese sauce eaten hot on toast. What made the béchamel version popular in American cookery schools was the emphasis those schools placed on the white sauce as a foundation technique — Fannie Farmer and her contemporaries taught roux proportions as a scale, from thin sauce through to a paste stiff enough to slice, and a sandwich filling was simply the stiffest rung. Books of the period devote considerable space to fillings that could be made ahead and kept, which is what the optimistic "this will keep a week" is quietly assuming.