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Limburger Cheese Sandwich
Spread thin slices of lightly buttered rye bread with limburger cheese, then with thin slices of bologna sausage; cover with another slice of rye bread. Garnish with a pickle.
A two-line sandwich that depends entirely on the quality of three bought ingredients, so the notes are about sourcing and handling rather than technique.
- The cheeseLimburger is a washed-rind, surface-ripened cow's milk cheese with an aroma out of all proportion to its taste, which is mild and beefy when young and increasingly ammoniated with age. Buy the youngest piece you can find; the paste should be pale and yielding, not translucent and running at the edges.
- Spreading itCold Limburger crumbles and tears the bread. Let it stand at room temperature for a short while and it spreads like soft butter. The recipe gives no quantity; a thin, even layer is in keeping with the thin slices of bread it specifies.
- The butter mattersThe recipe calls for the bread to be lightly buttered before the cheese goes on. Butter helps seal the crumb against moisture from the cheese and takes the edge off its salt, though the recipe itself gives no reason.
- BolognaBologna at this date would generally have been bought sliced from a delicatessen or sausage maker rather than pre-packed, and recipes of the period assume that sort of counter product. Formulas varied by maker, so no single meat mixture or seasoning can be assumed. Have it cut thin.
- The breadThe recipe specifies only thin slices of rye. A firmer rye will hold up better under a soft cheese than a very light, open-crumbed loaf.
- The pickleThe recipe says only 'a pickle'. A sour dill or half-sour gives acidity against the fat of the cheese and sausage, though sweet pickles were also common as a garnish at the time.
- StorageWrap the cheese in waxed paper inside a lidded container, and keep it away from butter, eggs and milk in the refrigerator, all of which take on its smell within a day.
- YieldNo quantities are given; the method makes one sandwich for each pair of slices.
Limburger is generally held to take its name from the historic Duchy of Limburg, in the border country of present-day Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, and it reached American tables through nineteenth-century German immigration. Wisconsin, and Green County in particular -- Swiss and German dairy country -- became the centre of American Limburger making; the reduction to a single surviving factory there is a much later development than this book, not the situation when it was compiled. Limburger with rye bread and beer, often with onion and mustard, is frequently described as a saloon-lunch combination in German-American cities, and the cheese certainly carried a comic reputation in the popular press of the period for its smell.