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Cottage Cheese Sandwiches
Cut slices of brown bread about one-half-inch thick, not removing the crusts. Rub one-half pint of cottage cheese to a smooth paste, then press it through a fine sieve; add slowly, beating all the while, two tablespoons of melted butter, one-half teaspoon of salt and two tablespoons of thick cream. Spread each slice of bread thickly with this cream mixture. Cover with a very thin slice of white bread, and on top of this put another thin layer of cheese. Cover with a slice of brown bread and, trim into shape.
A three-layer ribbon sandwich that depends almost entirely on the texture of the cheese filling. Get it smooth and it slices cleanly; leave it curdy and the layers slide apart under the knife.
- Half a pint of cottage cheeseThat is one cup by volume, roughly 8 oz. Use dry-curd or small-curd cottage cheese rather than the loose, heavily creamed kind sold today, or drain it in a sieve for half an hour first.
- Sieving is the hingeRubbing and then pressing through a fine sieve is what turns curds into a spreadable paste. A food processor does the same job in seconds, but push the result through a sieve anyway to catch the last grains.
- Melted butter, added slowlyTwo tablespoons of warm melted butter beaten in gradually will emulsify into the cheese and set as the sandwich chills, firming the filling so it holds a clean edge. Poured in all at once it separates into greasy flecks.
- Thick creamHere this means rich, unwhipped dairy cream rather than clotted or soured cream; modern heavy cream is the nearest equivalent. Two tablespoons is a starting point; the filling should be stiff enough to hold a peak, not pourable.
- Brown breadMost likely a whole-wheat or graham loaf rather than the steamed molasses-and-cornmeal Boston brown bread, though the recipe does not say. Any dense whole-wheat sandwich loaf that slices without tearing works.
- Slice thicknessThe half-inch brown slices are structural; the white slice in the middle should be as thin as your knife will manage, about an eighth of an inch. A day-old loaf cuts far better than fresh.
- Chill before trimmingAssemble, wrap in waxed paper or plastic, and refrigerate 30 minutes under a light weight. The butter in the filling sets, and the trimmed edges then stay square instead of squashing.
- YieldOne cup of cheese will fill roughly three or four triple-decker sandwiches, depending how thickly you spread; trimmed, that is somewhere around a dozen small tea-sized pieces.
Layered "ribbon" sandwiches of alternating brown and white bread were a standard of the American tea table and luncheon in the years around 1900, when sandwiches were judged as much on appearance as on flavor and cookbooks devoted whole sections to them. Cottage cheese suited the fashion well: cheap, mild, made in quantity from surplus milk on farms and increasingly sold by city dairies, and pale enough to show off sharply against a dark loaf. Butterick's cookbook, published by the pattern company for a readership of home dressmakers and housekeepers, treats the sandwich as a piece of construction work, with the thin white slice acting as a stripe rather than as bread, and the instruction to trim into shape coming last for good reason.