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Swiss Cheese Sandwich No. 2
Butter thin slices of pumpernickel bread. Between slices put a thin layer of Swiss cheese and leaves of watercress. Cut in long narrow strips. Garnish with an olive.
A three-ingredient sandwich that lives or dies on the bread and the cut. Nothing here needs conversion, but a few choices are worth making deliberately.
- The pumpernickelProbably dense, dark, close-grained rye of the German style rather than the sweet, molasses-tinted American loaf, though the recipe does not say. If your bread is a soft sandwich rye, the sandwich is likelier to collapse when cut into strips.
- Slice thicknessThe recipe specifies only "thin," with no measurement. Pumpernickel is heavy, so a thick slice will turn a tea sandwich into a meal and overwhelm the cheese; cut as thin as the loaf allows.
- Butter it edge to edgeThe butter is structural as much as flavouring: it seals the crumb so the watercress moisture does not soak in. Have it properly softened and spread right to the borders.
- The cheese"Swiss cheese" in an American cookbook of this kind most likely means Emmentaler or a domestic imitation of it, sliced thin. A single sheet trimmed just inside the bread's edge cuts more cleanly than a folded thicker slice.
- WatercressUse the leaves and the tenderest stem tips only; heavier stems make the strips fibrous and hard to bite through. Wash and dry the cress thoroughly, since any clinging water will grey the bread.
- Cutting into stripsThe recipe asks only for "long narrow strips" and says nothing about crusts. Press the sandwich gently under a board for a minute, then cut with a long thin knife, wiping the blade between cuts.
- Yield and servingNo yield is given; how many strips you get depends on the size of the loaf. Assemble shortly before serving and keep covered with a damp cloth so the edges do not dry.
- The oliveThe recipe says only "garnish with an olive," without saying whether it goes on the strips or beside them. A whole green olive, stoned or stuffed, set beside the arranged strips is one reading.
Sandwich books proliferated in America in the first decades of the twentieth century, when afternoon tea, card parties and "luncheon" service created steady demand for small, cold, handheld food that could be made ahead and arranged prettily on a plate. The type collected here is the tea finger: crusts off, cut long and narrow, garnished with something bright at the edge of the dish. Dark rye, Swiss cheese and watercress were all readily to hand in the period, watercress being a standard salad green, cheap in season. That the book runs to a Swiss Cheese Sandwich No. 2 at all says something about the genre: variation was the point.