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Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches
1 cupful diced cheese 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 teaspoonful salt 1 can pimientoes 1 teaspoonful cornstarch 6 tablespoonfuls milk Paprika to taste Graham bread Put cheese into double boiler, add Crisco, cornstarch, milk, salt, and paprika to taste and stir and cook until smooth, then add pimientoes cut into small pieces. Spread between buttered slices of graham bread. Sufficient for twenty-five sandwiches.
A cooked pimiento cheese spread rather than the mayonnaise-bound kind, thickened with cornstarch so it stays smooth and slices cleanly. The double boiler is not optional.
- Keep it off direct heatCheese held over boiling water stays below the point where the proteins tighten and squeeze out fat. Cooked in a saucepan over a burner it will turn grainy and weep oil, and no amount of stirring brings it back.
- Crisco, and what to use insteadCrisco in 1913 was a new all-vegetable hydrogenated shortening, promoted here as a substitute for butter and lard. Two tablespoons of butter does the same job with better flavour; the fat is there to enrich the spread and keep it soft when cold.
- The cheeseThe recipe does not specify a variety; a mild firm American-style cheese is the likely intent, and a cupful diced comes to roughly 4 to 5 oz. Grate it rather than dicing so it melts evenly, and avoid pre-shredded cheese, whose anti-caking starch fights the cornstarch.
- Canned pimientosPimientos of this period were sold in small tins, commonly in the 4 to 7 oz range; a modern 4 oz jar is a reasonable starting point. Drain them well and blot dry, or the packing liquid will thin the spread and make the bread damp.
- Cornstarch handlingWhisk the teaspoon of cornstarch into the cold milk before it goes near the cheese. Dropped in dry it will leave lumps that never disperse at double-boiler temperature.
- Graham breadGraham bread is a whole-wheat loaf made with coarse unsifted flour. Any dense whole-wheat sandwich bread stands in; the nutty flour sits well against the salt and paprika.
- Cool before spreadingThe mixture spreads badly while hot and soaks the bread. Let it firm up to a thick paste, then spread; it will keep several days covered in the refrigerator and can be softened at room temperature.
- YieldTwenty-five sandwiches from about a cup of cheese implies a thin filling, on the scale of small tea sandwiches. Spread more thickly as lunch sandwiches, it will make considerably fewer.
Crisco was introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911, and The Story of Crisco was one of the promotional cookbooks issued to teach American cooks what to do with a fat that was neither butter nor lard; every recipe in it exists partly to demonstrate the product. The sandwich itself catches pimiento cheese at an early stage. Spanish sweet peppers, canned and imported, became widely available in the United States in the first years of the century and were soon grown commercially in Georgia, and cooks combined them with cheese in both cooked spreads like this one and uncooked ones bound with cream cheese or mayonnaise. The later Southern association of pimiento cheese with barbecue and celery sticks came afterwards; here it belongs to the genteel world of afternoon tea sandwiches cut small and served twenty-five at a time.