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Cottage and Olive Sandwich
Spread thin slices of lightly buttered graham bread with mustard, then a thin layer of cottage cheese, and then a layer of chopped olives that have been mixed with a little mayonnaise dressing. Cover with another slice of bread and press together.
A straightforward tea-table sandwich that needs almost no translation, though the cottage cheese of 1900 was a drier, more crumbly curd than most tubs sold today.
- Graham breadGraham bread is a whole-wheat loaf made with coarsely ground, unsifted flour, often slightly sweetened. Any dense whole-wheat loaf works; the recipe asks only for thin slices, so cut them as thin as the loaf will allow.
- Cottage cheesePeriod cottage cheese was hand-drained and comparatively dry. Small-curd cottage cheese drained in a sieve for 20 minutes, or a spoonful of fromage blanc or farmer cheese, will spread without soaking the bread.
- The mustard"Mustard" here most likely means a prepared mustard rather than dry powder; the recipe does not say which sort. Use it thinly; it is the only assertive note against bland curd and salty olive.
- OlivesThe recipe does not say which sort; green or ripe both suit. Chop them fine and pat them dry before mixing with the mayonnaise, or the filling will weep into the bread.
- MayonnaiseA little means a teaspoon or two for every half cup of chopped olives, just enough to bind. Commercial mayonnaise is fine; the homemade raw-yolk version of the period is what the original assumed.
- Order of assemblyButtering first helps seal the crumb so the mustard and moist filling do not soak through. Butter to the edges, soft but not melted.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; make up as much filling as you need. Press, trim the crusts if serving at tea, and cut into triangles or fingers; keep them under a damp cloth and serve the same day.
Sandwich books proliferated in America between about 1900 and 1920, when the afternoon tea, the club luncheon and the picnic hamper all demanded something small, cold and endlessly variable. Cottage cheese belonged to that moment for practical reasons: it was cheap, made at home from surplus or slightly soured milk, and promoted by domestic-science writers as a wholesome protein for meatless meals. Graham bread carries its own argument, named for Sylvester Graham, the antebellum dietary reformer who preached coarse unsifted flour, and by 1900 the name had settled into ordinary bakery use with the moralising mostly drained out of it. Olives, meanwhile, had shifted from imported luxury to grocery staple as California plantings matured, and they turn up chopped into sandwich fillings in book after book of this period.