Home › Cheese › Morocco Sandwich
Morocco Sandwich
Melt a cupful of cheese, American or Parmesan; while soft, add enough mayonnaise to make it spread easily; lay this on thin slices of lightly buttered whole wheat bread and slice stuffed olives over cheese. Cover with another slice of lightly buttered bread; garnish top with stuffed olive.
A spreadable cheese filling from the era when sandwich fillings were expected to be soft enough to bind two thin slices together. The whole thing turns on temperature.
- The hinge: let the cheese cool before the mayonnaiseMayonnaise added to hot melted cheese will split, leaving an oily slick. Melt the cheese gently, take it off the heat, and let it drop to just-warm before beating in the mayonnaise a spoonful at a time.
- "American" cheese in 1909This means domestic cheddar, not the processed singles the phrase now suggests. Use a mild to medium cheddar; a young, high-moisture one melts more smoothly than a crumbly aged block.
- A cupful of cheeseGrated and lightly packed, roughly 4 oz. Parmesan behaves quite differently from cheddar here, going grainy rather than fluid, so if you use it, cut it with something softer.
- Stuffed olivesMost likely pimiento-stuffed green olives, though anchovy- and almond-stuffed olives were also on sale at the time. Slice them into thin rounds crosswise so the stuffing shows, and blot them, since olive brine will soak the bread.
- Work while it is warmThe filling stiffens to a solid paste as it cools and will tear thin bread. Spread it while it is still pliable, or warm it briefly and stir before assembling.
- The breadWhole wheat sandwich bread, cut thin, lightly buttered on both facing slices. The butter is not for richness but to seal the crumb against the olives and the mayonnaise.
- YieldAbout four sandwiches, or a dozen or so smaller pieces if cut into fingers or triangles.
The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book belongs to a brief publishing rush of sandwich manuals in the first decades of the twentieth century, when the sandwich moved from a working lunch to a fixture of afternoon teas, card parties and club luncheons. Books of the type ran to hundreds of variations, many differing from one another only by a garnish, and the names were largely decorative: geographic labels such as Morocco seem to have been attached largely for the sound of them, perhaps gesturing at some Mediterranean or North African note in the filling, here presumably the green olives. The recipe also shows the period's confidence in mayonnaise as an all-purpose binder, and its use of whole wheat bread fits the early-century health-food current that brought "graham" and whole wheat loaves into fashionable tea sandwiches alongside plain white.