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Swiss and Nut Sandwich
Chop English walnuts fine; mix with grated Swiss cheese. Add a little thick cream to moisten, season with salt and cayenne. Place between thin slices of lightly buttered brown bread. Garnish with an olive.
A spreadable cheese filling of the kind that filled tea trays before cream cheese took over the job. The whole thing hangs on grating the cheese finely enough that the cream can bind it.
- Grate fine, not shreddedCoarse shreds of Swiss will not absorb cream and the filling falls out of the bread in ribbons. Use the small holes of a box grater or the fine grating disc; the result should look almost powdery before the cream goes in.
- "English walnuts"Simply the common walnut, distinguished in period American books from the native black walnut, which is far stronger and would overwhelm the cheese. Ordinary supermarket walnut halves are what is wanted. Toasting them briefly is not in the original but improves the flavor.
- Thick creamHeavy cream, roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons for every cup of grated cheese, added a little at a time. Stop when the mixture holds together under a spoon; a wet filling soaks through thin bread within minutes.
- CayenneA pinch, meaning the amount that clings to the tip of a knife. Cayenne turns up constantly in sandwich fillings of this period.
- Brown breadProbably a plain whole-wheat or graham loaf rather than the steamed Boston brown bread of the baked-bean table, though that was also sliced for sandwiches in this period. Cut thin and crustless if serving for tea.
- Quantities and yieldNo amounts are given anywhere. A workable ratio is 1 cup grated Swiss to 1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts, which fills about six thin sandwiches.
- Making aheadThe filling keeps a day covered in the refrigerator, but firms up considerably; let it sit out briefly and stir before spreading. Assemble the sandwiches close to serving.
- The oliveA whole green olive set on the plate or pinned to the sandwich with a toothpick, in the manner of the period. It is a garnish, not an ingredient, and can be left off without loss.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first decades of the twentieth century, driven by the afternoon tea, the ladies' luncheon and the new fashion for packed lunches. Cheese-and-nut combinations appear again and again in them, partly because grated cheese moistened with cream was one of the few ways to get a firm, sliceable, meatless filling. Swiss, then usually meaning imported Emmental or a domestic imitation of it, turns up often in such pairings, here with walnuts and brown bread.