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Club House Sandwich
Rub to a paste one tablespoonful of butter and two tablespoonfuls of soft club house cheese, a tablespoonful of grated Parmesan, a dash of salt and pepper, a teaspoonful of tarragon vinegar, and a teaspoonful of anchovy paste. Spread the above mixture on thin slices of toasted bread. Put slices together and cut triangular.
A potted-cheese spread on toast, closer to an anchovy-spiked cheese canapé than a modern club sandwich. The whole thing is assembly work; the only real decisions are what to use for the club house cheese and how thin to slice the bread.
- Club house cheeseA soft, spreadable potted cheese sold in jars around 1900. A firm cold-pack cheddar spread or a well-aged cheddar mashed smooth with a little butter stands in; avoid anything sweet or smoke-flavoured.
- Quantities and yieldOne tablespoon butter plus two of cheese and one of Parmesan makes roughly a quarter cup of paste — enough for two sandwiches, or eight small triangles. Scale up by fours for a tea plate.
- Anchovy pasteA full teaspoon in this small a quantity is assertive and salty. Start with half, taste, and only then add the dash of salt the recipe calls for.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth buying rather than substituting: it supplies the herbal note that keeps the cheese and anchovy from tasting flat. Plain white wine vinegar plus a pinch of dried tarragon is a passable stand-in.
- Rubbing to a pasteHave the butter and cheese at room temperature and work them together with the back of a spoon or a fork until completely smooth before the vinegar goes in. Cold butter will leave streaks and the vinegar will bead out of a broken mixture.
- The toastSpread while the toast is warm but not hot, and press the slices together firmly before cutting so the paste acts as glue. Trim crusts first, then cut corner to corner — a serrated knife and a light sawing motion keeps thin toast from shattering.
- ServingBest eaten within an hour; the toast softens from the inside as the butter warms. If made ahead, keep the paste covered in the refrigerator and toast to order.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) belongs to a brief publishing wave of single-subject sandwich manuals aimed at hostesses serving afternoon tea, card parties and railway lunches. "Club house cheese" here is not a reference to the triple-decker club sandwich but to a commercial product: the potted, jarred cheese spreads that appeared in North America in the late nineteenth century. Their appeal was shelf stability and immediate spreadability at a time when a household cheddar had to be grated or pounded in a mortar to reach the same state. The anchovy paste and tarragon vinegar mark the recipe as descended from the English savoury tradition — the small, salty, sharply seasoned bite served late in a meal — which passed into the American sandwich book more or less intact, minus its place in the dinner order.