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Mock Crab Sandwich
One-fourth cupful of grated American cheese, two tablespoonfuls butter creamed, a dash of salt, paprika, and mustard, a teaspoonful of chopped olives, vinegar and anchovy paste. Mix and spread on thin slices of white bread. Put the two slices together.
A spreadable cheese-and-anchovy filling that leans on salt, acid and paprika to suggest crab. The original is terse and leaves two ingredients unmeasured, so treat the amounts below as a starting point and taste as you go.
- American cheeseAt the time this was written the term meant a plain domestic cheddar, not the wrapped processed slice. Use a mild to medium cheddar and grate it finely so it creams smoothly with the butter.
- The unmeasured ingredientsVinegar and anchovy paste are listed with no quantity, which is a genuine gap in the original rather than something to guess at. About a teaspoon of cider or white wine vinegar and a teaspoon of anchovy paste will balance a quarter cup of cheese; add each in small increments, since both can swamp the mixture.
- Creamed butterThe butter must be soft enough to beat to a paste before the cheese goes in. Cold butter will leave the filling grainy and it will tear thin bread.
- Mustard"a dash" suggests dry mustard powder, though the recipe does not specify. Prepared mustard works but adds more liquid, so cut back the vinegar accordingly.
- OlivesThe recipe says only "chopped olives"; green olives in brine are the likeliest reading. Chop them fine and blot them dry, or the filling will weep into the bread.
- BreadThe recipe calls for thin slices of white bread; crusts are often trimmed for sandwiches of this kind, though the original does not say so. Butter is already in the filling, so no extra spread is needed.
- Yield and holdingThe quantities given fill roughly four thin sandwiches, cut into eight to twelve small pieces. The filling keeps a couple of days covered in the refrigerator and is easier to spread after twenty minutes at room temperature.
"Mock" dishes run right through late nineteenth and early twentieth century American cookery — mock turtle, mock duck, mock oysters, mock apple pie — and they served two purposes: standing in for something expensive or out of season, and offering the small pleasure of a convincing imitation. Crab was a good candidate for both, since fresh crabmeat spoiled fast and travelled badly inland. The trick relied on anchovy paste for marine savour, paprika for colour, and vinegar for the sharp edge of a dressed crab, all bound in creamed butter and cheese. The fashion for dainty crustless tea sandwiches is generally traced to around the turn of the century, and books of the period catalogued dozens of fillings meant to be spread thin, cut small, and served at afternoon receptions and card parties.