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French Cheese Sandwiches
Slice brown bread very thin, spread with a layer of jam or marmalade, strawberry or peach preferred, and over this a layer of cream cheese, very fresh. Cover with another slice of bread. Serve for afternoon tea.
An assembled sandwich rather than a cooked dish, so the whole recipe hinges on the two ingredients. Both mean something slightly different now than they did in 1902.
- "Cream cheese" hereIn a French context around 1900 this means a fresh, barely drained curd cheese — fromage blanc, petit-suisse or true Neufchâtel — not the stabilised block cheese sold under that name today. Look for fromage frais or a soft farmer's cheese; if you use a block-style cream cheese, let it soften fully or it will tear the thin bread.
- "Very fresh" is the instruction that mattersFresh curd cheeses of this kind sour quickly, which is presumably why the recipe insists on it. Buy the freshest you can find and assemble the sandwiches shortly before serving; the jam's moisture will slacken the cheese if they sit.
- Brown breadFor a tea sandwich this most likely means a fine wholemeal loaf rather than the dense steamed Boston brown bread, though the recipe does not say. A close-crumbed wholemeal sandwich loaf slices thin without crumbling.
- Slicing thinThe recipe asks only for "very thin" slices. A day-old loaf, well chilled, cuts far more cleanly than a fresh one.
- Jam choiceStrawberry and peach are named as preferred, though no reason is given; a sharp citrus marmalade would be a much more assertive partner for the mild cheese. Use a thick preserve rather than a runny one so it does not soak through.
- Yield and finishingThe recipe gives none. Reckon on two sandwiches per person for tea, crusts trimmed and each cut into three fingers or two triangles after assembly.
Sweet-and-fresh-cheese sandwiches belong to the elaborate ritual of afternoon tea, when the tea table called for a run of tiny crustless sandwiches in contrasting flavours rather than a single substantial one. The "French" in the title probably points at the cheese: unripened curd cheeses such as fromage blanc, petit-suisse and Neuchâtel were strongly associated with France, and English and American cooks of the period used "cream cheese" loosely for any of them, well before the stabilised American block cheese came to dominate the name.