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American Cheese Sandwich
Cream three tablespoonfuls of butter, add three tablespoonfuls of grated American cheese, one tablespoonful of anchovy essence, a dash of salt and paprika, one-fourth teaspoonful of mustard, and onefourth cupful of finely chopped olives. Place mixture between thin slices of lightly buttered rye bread.
A compound butter rather than a cheese filling, and it depends entirely on the cheese being a dry grating cheese. The chief adjustment is ingredient identification.
- "American cheese" is CheddarIn a 1909 sandwich book this means plain factory Cheddar, firm enough to grate on a box grater. Processed cheese slices did not yet exist in the form we know and will only smear; use a sharp aged Cheddar.
- Anchovy essenceA thin, strained bottled anchovy sauce, once a pantry staple and now hard to find outside British import shelves. Anchovy paste from a tube is the closest match; use about two teaspoons, since paste is more concentrated than the old essence.
- MustardDry English mustard powder is most likely meant here rather than prepared mustard from a jar, though the recipe does not specify. A quarter teaspoon of powder is roughly a scant teaspoon of prepared mustard if that is what you have, and you will want to hold back some of the salt.
- SaltAnchovy, olives and Cheddar all carry salt. Mix everything else first, taste, and then decide whether the dash of salt is wanted at all.
- OlivesGreen olives in brine, the pimiento-stuffed kind included. Chop fine and blot them dry on a towel, or the water will loosen the butter and soak into the bread.
- Butter temperatureCreaming works only at proper room temperature, around 65F. Cold butter will not take the cheese; melted butter will separate when it cools.
- Yield and keepingAbout three-quarters of a cup of spread, enough for six to eight small sandwiches cut into fingers or triangles. It keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator and improves after a few hours as the mustard and anchovy come forward.
- The breadA close-grained deli rye sliced thin, not a coarse open-crumbed loaf. The spread is rich and assertive, so the sandwiches are meant to be small.
This comes from Eva Greene Fuller's The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909), one of a wave of single-subject American cookbooks published when the sandwich was moving from workman's dinner pail to tea table and card party. The formula is essentially a savoury butter in the English manner transplanted to rye bread: anchovy essence, dry mustard and paprika were standard flavourings in the well-stocked kitchen of the period, and bottled anchovy sauce sat beside Worcestershire and mushroom catsup on the sideboard. "American cheese" at this date was simply a name for the domestic Cheddar turned out by factory creameries in New York, Wisconsin and Ohio, distinguishing it from imported Stilton, Roquefort or Gruyère rather than describing anything processed. The pairing with rye rather than white bread hints at the growing influence of delicatessen taste in American cities.