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Beet-and-Cream-Cheese Sandwiches
Spread one piece of bread with cream cheese, the other with beets that have been chopped very fine and seasoned with French dressing.
A two-line sandwich that depends almost entirely on managing moisture. The original assumes cooked beets on hand and a cook who knows what French dressing means.
- French dressingIn this period the term means a simple vinaigrette: roughly three parts oil to one of vinegar, with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name today.
- Cream cheeseAround 1900 this covered any fresh unripened soft cheese, including Neufchatel-style curd, which is looser and tangier than modern block cream cheese. Either works; soften block cheese at room temperature so it spreads without tearing the bread.
- Drain the beets hardThis is the hinge. Chopped beet dressed with vinaigrette weeps, and the sandwich turns pink and sodden within minutes. Toss the beet with dressing, then let it sit in a sieve and press out the liquid before spreading.
- The cheese is a barrierSpreading the cheese right to the crust on one slice seals that side against the beet juice. Butter thinly under the beet side for the same reason if the sandwich must sit.
- BeetsFresh beets boiled or roasted until tender, then peeled, have the firm texture the recipe wants. Vacuum-packed cooked beets work; pickled beets in jars bring their own vinegar and sugar, so cut back or omit the dressing.
- BreadA close-crumbed white or wholemeal sandwich loaf, sliced thin and crusts trimmed, suits this style of sandwich. Cut into fingers or triangles just before serving.
- YieldNo quantity is given. One medium cooked beet, finely chopped, and about 4 oz of cream cheese should make somewhere around six sandwiches, depending on how thickly they are spread.
This belongs to the American tea-and-luncheon sandwich vogue of the 1890s and 1900s, when thin bread, a soft spread and a single sharply flavoured filling replaced the meat-heavy sandwiches of the mid-century table. Cookery writers of the period, Janet McKenzie Hill among them, filled pages with such combinations; cream cheese was by then available commercially, and the sandwich had become a fixture at afternoon receptions, card parties and picnic baskets where nothing could be carved. Beets were a common cold-larder vegetable kept for salads. The pairing of tangy fresh cheese with sweet earthy beet, given a lift by vinegar, is one that has stayed in circulation for well over a century.