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German Club Sandwich
Thin slices of pumpernickel, rye, and white bread are used for this sandwich. Rub half a pound of smearcase until smooth, add three tablespoonfuls of thick cream and two of melted butter; season with pepper and salt. Spread some of this cheese mixture on a buttered slice of pumpernickel bread, followed by a slice of rye covered with the cheese, covered with a slice of buttered white bread. Garnish with slice of pickle.
A three-decker cheese sandwich built on the contrast between dark and light bread. The only unfamiliar item is the cheese itself.
- SmearcaseAn Americanization of the German Schmierkäse, meaning spreadable cheese. In an early twentieth-century American kitchen it meant fresh unripened curd cheese, closest today to dry-curd cottage cheese, farmer's cheese, or quark. Ordinary supermarket cottage cheese works if you drain it well in a sieve first, or the mixture will be too loose to hold a stack together.
- Quantity and yieldHalf a pound of cheese plus the cream and butter makes something over a cup of spread, which should be enough for several three-layer sandwiches. The mixture keeps a couple of days covered in the refrigerator.
- Rub until smoothThis is the step that matters. Curd cheese is granular, and unless you work it hard with a wooden spoon or spatula, or pulse it in a food processor, the spread stays lumpy and the thin bread slices tear as you press them together.
- Thick creamPeriod thick cream is roughly modern heavy cream, around 36 percent fat. Three tablespoons is a starting point; a well-drained cheese may want a spoonful more.
- Melted butterAdd it while barely warm and stir briskly. Poured in hot it will separate; poured in cold it seizes into flecks.
- BreadPumpernickel here means the dense German rye, sliced thin, not the sweetened dark cocktail loaf. Cut all three breads to the same footprint or trim the assembled sandwich, since a stack of mismatched slices will not cut cleanly.
- ServingNo cooking is involved despite the club-sandwich name. Cut into quarters or fingers, press briefly under a plate to compact the layers, and serve with the pickle slice as directed.
"Club sandwich" was often applied loosely by cookbook writers of the period to layered sandwiches of more than two slices of bread, rather than only to the toasted chicken-and-bacon version; the German label here appears to come from the ingredients rather than from any German original. Smearcase, from Schmierkaese, was a common entry in American cookbooks where German-speaking settlement was heavy, particularly Pennsylvania and the Midwest, where fresh curd cheese was a byproduct of the household dairy and eaten young rather than aged. The sandwich says something about the American pantry of its day: pumpernickel and rye were ordinary shop breads in many cities, and a cook could be assumed to know what to do with a half-pound of soft white cheese without further explanation.