Home › Sandwiches › Luncheon Sandwich
Luncheon Sandwich
A delicious luncheon sandwich consists of three ounces of cream cheese, chopped fine; mix it to a paste with a teaspoonful of anchovy and a teaspoonful of butter. Add a few chopped English walnuts, season to taste with salt and white pepper, and spread on thin slices of white bread. Serve with a garnish of water cress.
A simple compound-cheese spread that needs almost no translation, though two of its three ingredients meant something slightly different in 1900.
- "Cream cheese"In this period the term covered any soft fresh cheese, often closer to a drained curd or Neufchâtel than to the stabilized block sold today. Full-fat block cream cheese works; let it come to room temperature so it will take the paste without beating in air.
- "A teaspoonful of anchovy"This means anchovy paste or anchovy essence, both of which were commercially available at the time, not a whole fish. A teaspoon of modern anchovy paste is the right substitute; two mashed oil-packed fillets are roughly equivalent.
- Salt lastAnchovy paste is heavily salted and the butter may be as well. Mix everything, taste, then salt — the recipe's "season to taste" is doing real work here.
- White pepperProbably specified because black flecks show in a pale spread. It is a milder, slightly musty heat; black pepper is fine if you do not mind the appearance.
- Chopping the cheese"Chopped fine" suggests a firmer, drier curd than modern block cheese, one that had to be broken down before it would blend. With modern cream cheese, simply mash it smooth with a fork or small spatula.
- The walnutsKeep the pieces small but distinct and fold them in gently. Toasting them briefly improves the flavour and is not a departure from the spirit of the recipe.
- Bread and assemblyThin-sliced white sandwich bread, crusts trimmed, cut into fingers or triangles. Three ounces of cheese spreads about six to eight slices, giving roughly a dozen small sandwiches — enough for four at a light luncheon.
- Holding themMade an hour or two ahead and covered with a damp cloth, they keep well. Longer than that and the spread begins to soak into the bread.
Sandwiches of this kind belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian ladies' luncheon, a meal built around small, cool, easily handled food rather than joints and gravies. The pairing of soft fresh cheese with anchovy was a familiar British combination, associated with the savoury course and with the bottled anchovy essences and pastes that had been kitchen staples since the early nineteenth century; a little of it gave a bland spread the salt and depth that plain cheese lacked. Walnuts, called "English" in American books to distinguish them from the native black walnut, added the crunch, and watercress was a near-obligatory garnish of the period, valued as much for its look on the plate as for eating.