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Harlequin Sandwich
Lightly buttered slices of white and graham bread. Spread each with Neufchatel cheese and sprinkle with a few English walnut meats. Put a white and a brown slice together.
A tea sandwich that depends entirely on contrast: pale bread against dark, soft cheese against crisp nut. The whole point is the two-tone look, so cut and stack with that in mind.
- Graham breadGraham bread is made with coarsely milled whole wheat flour, usually with a little molasses or brown sugar. Any good whole wheat sandwich loaf stands in; the important thing is a clear color difference from the white slice.
- NeufchatelThe American Neufchatel sold in supermarkets is a soft fresh cheese much like cream cheese with less fat, which is what this book means. It is not the bloomy-rind French Neufchâtel from Normandy. Let it soften to room temperature or it will tear the bread.
- English walnut meats"English walnut" simply distinguishes the common Persian walnut from the native black walnut, which is far stronger in flavor. Ordinary walnut halves are correct. Chop them fine and toast them briefly for better flavor and less sogginess.
- Butter first, then cheeseThe thin butter layer is not redundant. It seals the crumb against moisture from the cheese, which matters if the sandwiches sit on a tray for an hour before serving.
- CuttingTrim the crusts and cut into fingers, triangles or small squares after assembly, using a long thin knife wiped between cuts. Cutting first and filling afterward crushes the edges.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Roughly 4 oz of Neufchatel and a scant half cup of chopped walnuts will fill about eight whole sandwiches, or two to three dozen tea-sized pieces.
- HoldingCover with a barely damp towel and refrigerate no more than a few hours; the sandwich is meant to be eaten the day it is made.
Harlequin, in the kitchen vocabulary of the period, meant anything parti-colored or checkered, after the diamond-patterned costume of the commedia dell'arte character; the name attached itself to layered ices, jellies and, here, a two-tone sandwich. Small books of this kind proliferated in the United States in the early 1900s, when the afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon made the sandwich a course in its own right rather than a workingman's dinner, and a whole genre of cookery writing grew up around fillings that were decorative, cold and easily cut into shapes. Graham bread, named for the dietary reformer Sylvester Graham, had by then lost most of its reformist associations and survived chiefly as the dark half of exactly this sort of contrast, paired with white bread in checkerboard, ribbon and pinwheel sandwiches that show up under many names across the sandwich books of the era.