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American Cheese Sandwich No. 2
Cream two tablespoonfuls of butter, add onefourth cupful of grated American cheese and one teaspoonful of vinegar, and season with salt, paprika, mustard, and anchovy essence. Place mixture between thin slices of white bread. Garnish with a pickle.
A spreadable cheese butter rather than a melted sandwich — the whole thing depends on the butter being soft enough to whip.
- "American cheese" in 1909This means a firm domestic Cheddar of the kind made in New York and Wisconsin, not the processed slices sold under the name today. Use a sharp block Cheddar and grate it fine on the small holes so it works into the butter.
- Butter temperatureCream means beat with a spoon or paddle until pale and fluffy, which requires butter at true room temperature, around 65F. Cold butter will not take up the cheese and the spread turns crumbly.
- QuantitiesTwo tablespoons butter to a quarter cup grated cheese gives a soft, spreadable paste. The recipe gives no yield; the quantity looks like enough for a few thin sandwiches, depending on how thickly it is spread.
- Anchovy essenceA Victorian bottled condiment of salted anchovy, vinegar and spice, still sold in Britain. Anchovy paste is the closest current equivalent; use about half a teaspoon and taste before adding salt, since both it and the cheese are already salty.
- Mustard and paprikaDry mustard powder is intended, not prepared mustard, which would add more liquid. A quarter teaspoon of each is a sensible starting point; paprika here is for color and mild sweetness, not heat.
- VinegarOne teaspoon in so little butter is assertive. Cider or white wine vinegar suits it; add it a few drops at a time while beating so the emulsion does not break.
- Bread and assemblyThin slices from a close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, crusts trimmed if serving as tea sandwiches. The spread keeps several days covered in the refrigerator and firms up considerably, so let it soften again before spreading.
The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book belongs to a brief publishing vogue in the years around 1900 for whole volumes devoted to sandwiches, which by then were closely associated with ladies' luncheons, card parties and afternoon tea. Recipes like this one are less sandwiches than potted cheese thinned with butter -- a technique that recalls English potted meats and cheeses, where fat both bound and preserved the mixture. The anchovy essence points to that English descent: bottled fish sauces were a common savory seasoning of nineteenth-century cooking, doing work now often done by Worcestershire sauce, which itself contains anchovy. That the cheese is specified as American reflects a distinction of the period, when domestic factory Cheddar competed on grocers' shelves with imported English and Swiss cheeses and was named accordingly.