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Cheese and Orange Marmalade Sandwiches
½ cup cream cheese
½ cup orange marmalade
¼ cup cream
Spread half the slices with seasoned cheese, softened with the cream and mixed with seasoning if desired, the other half with orange marmalade to which is added a little French mustard, and fit slices together.
A three-ingredient filling that assumes more of the cook than it states: no bread quantity, no seasoning specified, and a cheese that meant something looser in 1900 than it does now.
- The cheeseEarly twentieth-century "cream cheese" covered soft fresh cheeses generally, including Neufchatel and homemade drained curd, as well as the branded product. Any full-fat block cream cheese works; a Neufchatel, being softer and slightly tangier, may be nearer what was meant.
- Cream as a thinnerA quarter cup of cream to half a cup of cheese gives a spread near the consistency of thick sour cream. Add it a spoonful at a time and stop when the mixture spreads without tearing bread; the exact amount depends on how firm the cheese is.
- "Seasoned" and "seasoning"The recipe never says with what. Salt with a little paprika or white pepper would suit a sweet-savoury sandwich; a pinch of salt alone is enough to keep the cheese from tasting flat against the marmalade.
- French mustardThis means a smooth, mild prepared mustard in the Dijon manner, not the bright yellow American style and not dry mustard powder. A scant half teaspoon in half a cup of marmalade is the right order of magnitude — it should read as a savoury edge, not as mustard.
- BreadThe recipe specifies no bread. Tea sandwiches of this type were generally thin-cut white, crusts off, buttered or not as the filling dictates. A dense wholemeal fights the marmalade.
- Assembly and holdingMarmalade soaks into bread quickly. Spread the cheese right to the edges on its slice so it acts as a barrier, and assemble no more than an hour ahead, covered with a damp cloth.
- YieldThe quantities given fill roughly six to eight rounds of thin bread — two to three dozen small tea sandwiches once trimmed and quartered.
Sweet-and-savoury sandwiches like this one belong to the American afternoon-tea and "luncheon" table of the early 1900s, when sandwich-making had become an occasion for invention rather than a way of using up cold roast. Butterick, a pattern company, sold domestic manuals alongside dress patterns, and such manuals typically carried long lists of sandwich fillings. Orange marmalade, imported from Britain and by then also made commercially in the United States, was a pantry staple with a bitterness that stood up to cheese; the addition of French mustard — the standard period term for a smooth, vinegar-based prepared mustard rather than the hot English powder — keeps the whole thing from sliding into dessert.