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Hunter's Sandwich (Switzerland).
Spread fresh bread, cut in thin slices, with fresh butter; over this spread a layer of Brie or other cream cheese, and over the cheese spread a layer of honey. Press two similarly shaped pieces together and serve at once.
Hunter's Sandwich (Ellwanger).
Prepare as above, substituting maple syrup (or sugar) for the honey.
Two versions of the same open assembly: bread, butter, soft cheese, something sweet. The only technical demand is that the cheese be soft enough to spread without tearing thin bread.
- "Cream cheese" hereIn this period the phrase generally meant a soft, unripened or bloomy-rind cheese of high cream content, not the firm block sold under that name today. Brie, Camembert or a fresh farmer-style cheese all fit the intent.
- Bring the cheese to room temperatureCold Brie will drag and shred thin slices of fresh bread. Let it stand 30 to 45 minutes out of the refrigerator, and trim the rind only if it is thick and chalky.
- "Serve at once" is the hingeHoney and syrup begin to wet the crumb within minutes, and butter is the only barrier. Assemble immediately before eating; these do not hold as packed sandwiches despite the name.
- Butter to the edgesThe layer of butter is structural, not just flavour. Spread it fully so the honey cannot reach the bread directly.
- Honey and syrup quantityThe original specifies only "a layer" and gives no measure; a thin film is enough. Roughly a teaspoon per sandwich, since more will slide apart under pressure.
- The Ellwanger variantMaple syrup, being thinner than honey, soaks faster still. If using maple sugar as the alternative given, grate or crush it fine so it dissolves against the cheese rather than sitting in grains.
- BreadA close-crumbed white or light wheat loaf cut about 1/4 inch thick. Sourdough with large holes lets the honey run through.
- YieldTwo slices make one sandwich; figure two small sandwiches per person as a tea or supper item, cut into halves or fingers.
Bread, butter, soft cheese and honey is old Alpine eating rather than an invented recipe, and "Hunter's Sandwich" is the sort of picturesque national label American compilers liked to attach to continental habits. The second version credits Ellwanger, plausibly George Herman Ellwanger, who is generally credited with the gastronomic essays collected as The Pleasures of the Table; borrowing a variation from a named gourmet functioned as a kind of citation. What the pair really documents is the moment when the sandwich stopped meaning cold meat between bread: books of the period catalogue sweet, cheese, nut and fruit fillings for the tea table and the chafing-dish supper, and the honey-and-Brie combination that reads as modern was already in print long ago.