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Dairy Sandwich
On thin slices of Swiss cheese, spread fresh butter and put the two slices together.
Two lines, no bread, and no cooking — the whole of the work is in the slicing and the quality of the two ingredients. Which means both have to be good.
- There is no bread, and that is deliberateThere is no bread, and the cheese stands in for it -- breadless "sandwiches" of this kind do turn up in the sandwich books of the period.
- Slice thin, but not paper-thinAbout 1/8 inch is the working thickness: thin enough to bend without cracking, thick enough to hold butter without tearing. A sharp knife on cheese straight from the refrigerator gives the cleanest cut; let the slices sit out fifteen minutes before buttering so they are pliable.
- "Fresh butter" means unsaltedIn 1900s usage fresh or sweet butter is butter that has not been salted for keeping. Salted butter against Swiss cheese pushes the whole thing salty; use unsalted, at soft room temperature so it spreads without dragging.
- Swiss cheese, then and nowThe name meant imported Emmental or a domestic imitation of it — firm, nutty, holed. Supermarket pre-sliced "Swiss" is milder and wetter than what was intended; a wedge of Emmental or Jarlsberg cut to order is closer, and Gruyère is better still if you do not mind losing the holes.
- Butter the inside faces onlyButter both cut surfaces that will meet, press gently, and the two slices hold together. Butter on the outside just makes it greasy to pick up.
- Yield and servingTwo slices make one small sandwich. Figure two or three per person as part of a cheese course or with drinks, cut into fingers or triangles, and serve cool rather than cold — refrigerator temperature mutes both the cheese and the butter.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book belongs to the brief, intense American vogue for sandwich cookery in the years around 1900, when the sandwich moved off the workman's plate and onto the tea table and the bridge party. Recipes multiplied faster than ideas, which is how a book comes to contain instructions for buttering one slice of cheese and laying a second on top. Breadless "sandwiches" of this kind — cheese on cheese, or filling between two apple rings or cucumber slices — turn up across the genre and reflect the period's fondness for dainty, fork-free food served in quantity. The Swiss cheese itself signals something about the era's groceries: American factories in Wisconsin were already turning out domestic versions.