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Cream Cheese and Olive Sandwich No. 2
Chop olives fine, mix with cream cheese, add a little sweet cream to moisten, season with salt and paprika. Place between thin slices of lightly buttered white or brown bread.
A filling with no quantities at all, which is typical of sandwich books of this period — the cook was expected to judge by consistency. A workable ratio is 8 oz cream cheese to about 1/3 cup chopped olives.
- The hinge: spreadable, not stiffSoften the cheese to room temperature before mixing, then add cream a teaspoon at a time. The paste should just hold a swirl; if it is stiff it will tear thin bread rather than spread on it.
- "Sweet cream"This means fresh unsoured cream, not sweetened. Any heavy or whipping cream works; milk will thin it too fast and dull the flavor.
- Cream cheese has changedIn 1909 the term could still cover a range of soft fresh cheeses, including Neufchatel-style ones with less fat and more moisture, alongside the commercially branded product. Modern block cream cheese is comparatively dense, so it may take a little more cream to reach a spreadable paste.
- OlivesMost likely brine-cured green olives, though the recipe does not say and ripe black olives were also available. Pit them, drain well, and blot dry -- wet olives will weep and soften the bread.
- Hold the salt until the endBetween the brine in the olives and the salt in the cheese, the mixture is often seasoned already. Taste before adding any.
- PaprikaSweet paprika, used here as much for the pink flecks as for heat. Smoked paprika, though not itself new, is not what is meant here and will take over the whole sandwich.
- Butter earns its placeThe thin film of butter is a moisture barrier between a wet filling and soft bread. Do not skip it if the sandwiches are to stand at all.
- Yield and servingOn the ratio suggested above, eight ounces of cheese will fill roughly six to eight sandwiches on standard sliced bread. Trim the crusts and cut into fingers or triangles for a tea-table presentation; wrap in a damp cloth and refrigerate if they must stand.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) belongs to a period of American interest in whole volumes devoted to the sandwich, associated with the ladies' luncheon, the afternoon tea and the packed lunch pail. Cream cheese fillings are prominent because commercially made fresh cheese had become cheap and widely distributed by the turn of the century, and because it takes flavorings -- olives, nuts, pimiento, chopped herbs -- without any cooking. The numbering of this entry as "No. 2" indicates at least one other version of the same pairing in the book. Green olives in brine were by this date a familiar item in American city groceries.