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Cream Cheese and Green Pepper Sandwich
Spread lightly buttered white bread with cream cheese; on this lay thin slices of green pepper that have been dipped in mayonnaise dressing. Cover with another slice of bread, cut oblong, and garnish with a sprig of parsley and an olive.
A three-minute assembly job whose only real problem is water: the pepper and the dressing will both weep into the bread. Everything below is about controlling that.
- Butter first, and mean itThe "lightly buttered" bread also serves as a moisture barrier. Use butter at room temperature, spread edge to edge, or the slice under the pepper will go damp.
- Cream cheese of the periodIn books of this kind this meant a soft fresh cheese, closer to Neufchatel or a drained farmer cheese than to the firm, gum-stabilized blocks sold now. Beat modern block cream cheese with a spoonful of cream or milk until it spreads without tearing the bread.
- Green pepperAn ordinary green bell pepper. Cut it into rings or wide strips, pare away the pale ribs, and slice as thin as you can manage — thick pepper makes the sandwich impossible to bite cleanly.
- Mayonnaise dressingEither true mayonnaise or the cooked "boiled dressing" common in the same books. Dip the pepper and let it drain on a cloth for a moment; the intent is a film, not a coating.
- Cut oblongCut each sandwich into two or three oblong fingers rather than triangles. The recipe says nothing about trimming the crusts.
- TimingAssemble within half an hour of serving. If you must work ahead, keep the dipped pepper separate and covered, and put the sandwich together at the last moment.
- Yield and servingOne slice pair gives two or three fingers, so figure two sandwiches per person as part of a larger tray. The parsley and olive are garnish, not filling.
Sandwich books of this kind proliferated in the United States between about 1900 and 1920, when afternoon teas, card parties and club luncheons created demand for food that could be made in quantity, held on a platter, and eaten standing. Cream cheese was central to the genre: American factory-made fresh cheese in foil-wrapped bricks had become widely available by the end of the nineteenth century, and it gave hostesses a bland, spreadable base that took any addition hink, chopped ginger, or here raw green pepper. The green bell pepper is often said to have been a comparative novelty on Northern tables at the time, valued more for crispness and color than heat. The trimmed oblong shape and the compulsory parsley sprig tell you the real point of the dish, which was how it looked on the tray.