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French Tea Sandwich
On thinly cut slices of lightly buttered white bread cut round, spread cream cheese and currant jelly. Cover with another slice and sprinkle top of sandwich with crumbs of pistache.
A four-ingredient tea sandwich whose success rests entirely on proportion and cutting. Nothing here needs updating so much as clarifying.
- Cream cheese, then and nowIn 1909 "cream cheese" meant a fresh, soft, unripened cheese; some of what was sold under the name was closer to today's Neufchatel or farmer's cheese, though commercial block cream cheese was already on the market. Full-fat block cream cheese works, but let it soften to room temperature and beat it smooth or it will tear the thin bread.
- Crumbs of pistacheThis means pistachio nuts, chopped or crushed fine, not a paste or flavoring extract. Use unsalted, skinned green pistachios so the color reads against the white bread; salted cocktail pistachios throw the balance off entirely.
- Spread order mattersSpread order -- The recipe butters the bread first, which already slows any soaking. If you want extra insurance against a damp round, put cream cheese on both slices and the jelly in the middle.
- Currant jellyThe recipe says simply currant jelly; red currant is tart and firm-set, which sits well against the fat of the cheese. Sweeter, looser grape or strawberry jam will make the sandwich wetter.
- Cutting roundsCut the rounds from the assembled sandwich rather than the loose slices if you want clean edges, then press the exposed rim into the pistachio crumbs. The instruction to sprinkle the top only is period-correct but the edge treatment holds better.
- BreadA close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, chilled or a day old, slices thinner than fresh bakery bread. Aim for about a quarter inch; anything thicker and the sandwich stops being a tea sandwich.
- Yield and holdingThe recipe specifies no size or quantity; one round per slice of a standard loaf is the practical limit. Assemble shortly ahead and keep them covered and refrigerated.
This comes from Eva Greene Fuller's The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book, a 1909 collection published at a time when the sandwich had been domesticated into a genteel, crustless, sweet-or-savory item for the tea table. The label "French" here appears to signal refinement rather than any documented French original. Pistachios were a fashionable garnish in the period's confectionery and ice cream work, valued largely for their colour.