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Jelly Sandwich
Spread an equal number of slices of lightly buttered white bread with guava jelly and cream cheese. Put slices together and trim the edges.
A two-ingredient tea sandwich that depends entirely on the balance between sweet jelly and tart fresh cheese. The only real technique is keeping the two layers from soaking the bread.
- Cream cheese, then and nowIn this period "cream cheese" meant a soft, fresh, mildly acidic cheese much closer to Neufchâtel or a drained farmer's cheese than to the stabilised block product. Modern brick cream cheese works but is denser and sweeter; let it soften fully and beat it slack so it spreads without tearing the bread.
- Guava jellyThe clear, set jelly is sold in Caribbean and Latin American groceries. Guava paste (goiabada, pasta de guayaba) is the same fruit in firmer form and is easier to handle here — cut thin slices rather than spreading.
- Spread each side separately"An equal number of slices" is most naturally read as jelly on half the slices and cheese on the other half, rather than both on one slice. Keeping them apart until closing helps stop the jelly bleeding into the cheese.
- The butter is structuralThe thin film of butter is what keeps jelly moisture out of the crumb. Do not skip it, and take the butter to full room temperature so it goes on in a continuous layer.
- BreadThe recipe specifies only white bread; a close-grained sandwich loaf cut thin suits the purpose. Day-old bread trims more cleanly than fresh.
- Trimming and yieldTrim crusts with a long serrated knife after the sandwich is closed and lightly pressed. The recipe stops at trimming the edges; cutting into fingers or triangles is optional. Assemble not far ahead and keep them covered with a damp cloth.
Guava jelly reached American tables through the Cuban and Florida trade, and by the 1900s it was a familiar imported preserve in East Coast cities. The pairing of guava with fresh white cheese is much older than the sandwich, being a standard Latin American and Caribbean dessert combination; putting it between buttered bread turns it into a fashionable tea-table item. Such books are often said to belong to a brief publishing genre that followed the rise of the afternoon reception and the ladies' luncheon, when hostesses are thought to have wanted dozens of small distinct fillings and compilers to have obliged by listing every plausible permutation, cheese by cheese and fruit by fruit.