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Cheese and Olive Sandwiches
Cut brown bread into very thin slices, buttering lightly. Lay between two of these slices, sandwich fashion, a filling made of cream cheese or cottage cheese in which has been mixed chopped olives. These sandwiches are delicious.
A three-line recipe with no quantities, which means the proportions are yours to set. The only real decisions are the bread and how wet the filling is.
- Cream cheese in 1911Cream cheese in this period -- The term covered fresh, unripened soft cheese, sold both in bulk from a tub and in foil-wrapped packages, and generally softer and less stabilized than a modern block. Block cream cheese works, but it needs softening to room temperature or it will tear thin bread.
- Cottage cheese needs drainingModern cottage cheese, especially creamed small-curd, carries a good deal of free liquid. Drain it in a sieve for half an hour, or press it through the sieve for a smoother filling, or the sandwiches go soggy within minutes.
- ProportionsRoughly 8 oz soft cheese to 1/3 cup chopped olives fills about a dozen thin slices, or six sandwiches. Olives dominate quickly, so start lower and taste.
- OlivesGreen olives in brine, chopped fine and blotted dry, suit this best; pimiento-stuffed Spanish olives were widely sold in America at the time. Cured black olives are much saltier and change the dish considerably.
- Brown breadThis most likely means a plain whole-wheat or Graham loaf, though steamed Boston brown bread was also used for tea sandwiches and slices neatly when a day old; the recipe does not say which.
- Cutting thinChill the loaf briefly and use a long serrated knife. Butter each slice to the edges before filling: the butter is a moisture barrier, not just seasoning, which is why the recipe specifies it even though the filling is already rich.
- Holding and servingTrim crusts after assembly, then cut into fingers or triangles. Cover with a barely damp towel and refrigerate up to a few hours; they do not keep to the next day.
Sandwiches of this kind belong to the American afternoon-tea and card-party table of the early twentieth century, when the sandwich chapter of a general cookbook filled up with thin bread, soft fillings and trimmed crusts rather than anything meant to travel in a lunch pail. Two things made the combination easy: factory-made fresh cheese, sold under the loose name cream cheese, and imported Spanish olives in glass and tin, often chopped as a garnish for savory dishes. The book appears to have come from the Butterick Publishing Company, which issued The Delineator alongside its dress patterns, and was aimed at a middle-class housekeeper who entertained modestly and without much help.