Gem Sandwich
Grate orange peel very fine, add a dash of ginger, spread thin slices of buttered white bread with Neufchatel cheese, sprinkle orange peel and ginger over the cheese. Put slices together. Garnish with an olive.
A tea sandwich of the kind that filled afternoon menus a century ago: three flavors, no cooking, and an olive on the plate for looks. The whole thing succeeds or fails on the orange peel.
- Zest, not peelGrate only the colored outer layer of the orange. Any white pith carried in with it turns the sandwich bitter, and there is nothing else here to hide it. A microplane over a whole unwaxed orange gives the right fineness.
- Neufchatel means the American cheeseIn an American book of this period this is the soft fresh cows'-milk cheese sold in blocks alongside cream cheese, not the bloomy-rind French Neufchâtel AOP. Modern block Neufchatel is close to cream cheese with roughly a third less fat and works as intended here. Let it come to room temperature or it will tear the bread.
- A dash of gingerMost likely ground dried ginger rather than fresh root, though the recipe does not say. If using dried, start with a scant 1/8 teaspoon for a quarter cup of cheese; it is assertive and will run over the orange if you are generous with it.
- Butter has a jobThe butter is not only flavor. Spread thinly to the edges, it seals the crumb against moisture from the cheese so the sandwiches hold for an hour or two on a plate.
- The breadThin slices from a close-grained white sandwich loaf, a day old, cut more cleanly than fresh. Tea sandwiches of this sort were often trimmed of crusts and cut into fingers or triangles after assembling, though this recipe does not say so.
- Mixing versus layeringAs written the zest and ginger sit on top of the cheese, which gives bursts of orange. Beating them into the softened cheese instead distributes the flavor evenly and is easier to spread; either is faithful to the intent.
- The oliveThe recipe does not say where the olive goes; read as a garnish, it sits beside the sandwich rather than inside it. A pimiento-stuffed green olive would not be out of place; skip it if a briny note beside orange and ginger does not appeal.
- YieldAbout a quarter cup of cheese covers four slices of bread, giving two whole sandwiches, or six to eight tea-sized fingers.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first decade of the twentieth century, when the afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon created steady demand for something small, cold, and quickly assembled. Recipes like this one are less cooking than composition: a fat, a flavoring, and a garnish, arranged on thin white bread. Neufchatel was a familiar American grocery item, made domestically as a fresh unripened cheese rather than the ripened French original from Normandy whose name it borrowed, and its mildness is often said to have recommended it as a base for sweet and savory sandwich fillings alike. The pairing of candied or fresh orange with dried ginger is carried here into a form that could be handed round on a plate.