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Russian Sandwiches
Slightly butter thin slices of bread; moisten fine-chopped olives with mayonnaise dressing and spread upon the buttered slices; spread other slices with Neufchatel, or any cream cheese, and press together in pairs.
A two-spread tea sandwich that depends entirely on proportion: too much mayonnaise and the olive layer bleeds through the bread. Work with the spreads stiff.
- The hinge: bind, don't sauceAdd mayonnaise to the chopped olives a teaspoon at a time, only until the mixture holds together on a knife. A loose olive paste soaks the crumb within an hour and the sandwich collapses.
- NeufchatelThe recipe pairs it with "any cream cheese," so a soft fresh cheese is clearly meant; most likely the American cheese sold under that name rather than the French bloomy-rind version. Modern US Neufchatel is essentially cream cheese with less fat; either works, and it should be at room temperature so it spreads without tearing the bread.
- OlivesBrine-cured green olives. Pit them, drain well and blot dry before chopping, then chop fine rather than paste. Pimiento-stuffed olives work and give flecks of red.
- BreadA close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, sliced about 1/4 inch. Day-old bread cuts thinner and cleaner than fresh. Butter should be softened, not melted, and spread edge to edge to seal the crumb against moisture.
- ProportionsThe original gives none. About 1/2 cup pitted olives with 1 to 2 tablespoons mayonnaise, and 4 oz cheese, fills roughly 8 sandwiches from a small loaf.
- Cutting and servingTrim crusts after assembly, then cut into halves, triangles or fingers. Cover with a damp cloth or plastic and refrigerate no more than two or three hours; these are meant for a tea table, not a packed lunch.
- SaltTaste before salting anything. Brined olives and mayonnaise together are already assertive, and the cheese layer needs nothing.
Janet McKenzie Hill's Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties belongs to the turn-of-the-century vogue for light, fussy, hostess-managed food: the afternoon tea, the ladies' luncheon, the chafing dish supper served without a cook in the room. "Russian" here is a period label rather than a provenance. American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s attached it to almost anything bound with mayonnaise and chopped relish-like bits, and it seems to have owed more to the fashionable prestige of things Russian and French in American dining rooms than to any Russian original, though that is guesswork rather than settled history. Neufchatel's appearance is a marker of date too: the fresh cheese had been made commercially in New York State since the 1870s, and by 1900 it and cream cheese were cheap, mild and reliably available, which is exactly why sandwich recipes of the era lean on them so heavily as a spreadable neutral base.