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Russian Sandwiches
½ cup Neufchatel cheese
¼ cup chopped pimiento
¼ cup chopped olives
¼ cup mayonnaise
10 lettuce leaves
Spread thin slices of Boston brown bread, lightly buttered, with Neufchatel cheese, or any other cream cheese. Spread also an equal number of buttered slices with finely chopped olives and pimientos mixed with mayonnaise dressing. Press together in pairs with a crisp lettuce leaf between.
A tea sandwich built on Boston brown bread, which is the detail that decides everything else. The recipe is straightforward; the only real work is slicing a soft steamed loaf thin enough.
- Boston brown breadA steamed, unsliced cylinder of rye, cornmeal and wheat sweetened with molasses, still sold in cans in some supermarkets and often baked at home in a coffee tin. Chill the loaf thoroughly before slicing and use a thin serrated knife with a sawing motion; warm brown bread tears rather than cuts.
- NeufchâtelAmerican Neufchâtel, not the French bloomy-rind cheese of the same name. It is a fresh cheese with about a third less fat than cream cheese and is still sold beside it; the recipe's own aside, "or any other cream cheese," tells you the substitution is expected.
- PimientoJarred roasted red pimiento peppers, drained and blotted dry before chopping. Wet peppers will slacken the mayonnaise and soak into the bread within an hour.
- OlivesMost likely green olives here, though the recipe does not specify. Chop fine and pat dry for the same reason as the pimiento.
- MayonnaiseA quarter cup binds the olives and pimiento into a spread. If it looks loose after the chopped ingredients go in, hold some back rather than adding more.
- YieldTen lettuce leaves means ten sandwiches, so twenty slices of bread. Cut each into halves or quarters for a tea tray; whole rounds are large for finger food.
- Assembly and holdingButter both faces right to the edge, which seals the crumb against the wet fillings. Made ahead, they keep an hour or two covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator, but the lettuce wilts and the brown bread softens after that.
"Russian" in American cookbooks of this era rarely signals anything Russian; it generally marks the presence of mayonnaise mixed with chopped pimiento or chili sauce, a combination often said to be the source of Russian dressing's name, though the origin of that name is not settled. The Butterick book belongs to a moment when the tea sandwich had become a fixture of American entertaining, and when canned pimientos and factory cream cheese were available to a home cook as pantry staples. Boston brown bread was the older element in the pairing, a New England steamed loaf of colonial descent that was also put to decorative use: its dark crumb and neat round slices made a striking contrast against a pale cheese filling, which is very likely why it is specified here.