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Macaroon Sandwich
Be sure the macaroons are fresh. Lay a slice of fresh cream cheese between two macaroons, pressing them firmly together. Keep in a cool place until wanted.
A two-ingredient assembly whose success depends entirely on what you understand "macaroon" and "cream cheese" to mean in 1909. Get those right and there is nothing else to it.
- The macaroonsThese are almond macaroons: chewy, meringue-based, small and rounded. Not French macarons (which already have a filling), and probably not the coconut style, which is coarser and sweeter against a fresh cheese.
- "Fresh cream cheese"In this period the phrase means an unripened soft cheese sold in a small foil-wrapped block or a paper tub: Neufchâtel, Philadelphia-style cream cheese, or a farm-made fresh curd. Modern block cream cheese is the closest match. Avoid whipped or tub-style spreads, which will not hold a slice.
- Cutting a sliceChill the block thoroughly and cut with a thin knife dipped in hot water, about a quarter inch thick, then trim to the shape of the macaroon. Warm cheese smears rather than slices.
- "Pressing them firmly together"Firmly, but the macaroon is brittle at the edges and will crack. Press from the centre outward with the flat of your palm and stop as soon as the cheese meets both surfaces.
- "A cool place"A larder or icebox in the original; a refrigerator now. Because the cheese is unripened and unheated, keep it refrigerated and serve within a few hours.
- Assemble lateMacaroons draw moisture from the cheese and go soft. The instruction to be sure they are fresh most likely refers to buying good macaroons rather than stale ones, but it also argues against building these far in advance.
- Yield and servingTwo macaroons per sandwich. A sweet sandwich of this kind suits afternoon tea.
Eva Greene Fuller's The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book (1909) collects this among hundreds of combinations, savoury and sweet alike, which shows how loosely the word "sandwich" was used at the time: anything held between two matching pieces of something qualified, biscuit and cake included. The sweet-sandwich habit suited the era's fashion for afternoon tea and card parties, where hostesses wanted small handheld items that could be made from shelf goods. Branded, foil-wrapped fresh cream cheese had been on sale since the 1880s, and its appearance here in a three-sentence recipe requiring no cooking at all is very much a product of the packaged-grocery age.