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Sandwich (Mix grated cheese with thick)
Mix grated cheese with thick cream to make a paste; place between thinly cut slices of lightly buttered white bread. Garnish with an olive.
A two-ingredient filling that lives or dies on the cheese. The instruction that matters is the consistency: work in the cream a spoonful at a time until the paste just holds together and spreads without tearing bread.
- Which cheeseIn English-language cookbooks of this period "cheese" without qualification usually points to a firm yellow factory cheddar, the kind sold by the wedge from a wheel. A sharp aged cheddar grated fine is the closest match; Parmesan or a young jack will behave differently under the cream.
- "Thick cream"Cream skimmed from unhomogenised milk was generally richer than modern light cream, and heavy cream is the closest thing on sale now. Half-and-half or light cream will loosen the paste into a sauce.
- Grate fineUse the small holes, not the coarse shredding side. Long shreds stay stringy in the paste and drag the bread when you spread; fine gratings dissolve into the cream.
- Softening the butterCold butter tears thin-cut bread. Have it at room temperature and spread it right to the edges, which also keeps the cream from soaking into the crumb.
- The breadThinly cut white bread suggests a close-crumbed sandwich loaf, sliced as thin as you can manage -- an eighth of an inch is about right. A day-old loaf slices thinner and cleaner than a fresh one.
- The oliveThis means a plain green olive in brine, set on top of the cut sandwich with a pick, or a slice laid on a small square. It is a garnish for a plate of sandwiches, not part of the filling.
- YieldRoughly a cup of grated cheese with two to three tablespoons of cream fills about six sandwiches cut into halves or fingers, which is a plate for four to six people at tea.
- TimingThe paste can be mixed several hours ahead and refrigerated, but let it come back to spreading temperature. Assemble close to serving and keep the sandwiches under a damp cloth; cut this thin, the bread dries within the hour.
Cheese-and-cream paste belongs to the era when the tea sandwich was a fixture of American entertaining and cookbooks devoted whole chapters, or whole volumes, to it. Compilations of this kind ran through dozens of near-identical fillings, each a bound spread between thin buttered slices, and the binder tended to be butter, cream or mayonnaise rather than anything cooked. The recipe's brevity is characteristic. The olive is a period signature as much as a flavour, since imported Spanish olives had become widely available in American groceries by the turn of the century and turn up as garnish throughout sandwich and salad chapters of the day.