Cheese and Pickle, the Most British Sandwich Yet?

Cheese and pickle. Not a combination I’d have thought of, but sure. I’ll just get some American cheese, some pickle chips, and some supermarket bread, and…

Of course it’s not that easy. Slices or spears of pickled cucumbers may be what I think of when I hear “pickle,” but all over the world, different cultures make different types of pickles. Pickling is the process of preserving food by creating an acidic environment to prevent, or seriously delay, the decomposition of the food by microorganisms. This is done either by an anaerobic fermentation (mostly lactic fermentation, which creates lactic acid as a byproduct) or by storing the food in an acid solution, such as vinegar, salt, sugar, water and spices.

Various types of vegetables, fruits, nuts, even eggs, fish, meats, and cheeses are pickled in different cultures around the world; in Europe, Asia, North and South America, the Middle East, and Africa. Wherever there are people and an unstable or seasonal food supply, food preservation becomes an issue, and pickling is one of the primary methods by which food is preserved. And besides, we like the flavor.

The “pickle” in cheese and pickle sandwiches, though, refers to a pretty specific type of pickle. Branston pickle is sometimes described as a “jarred pickled chutney” or a “spiced vegetable mixture” or “one of the greatest condiments…. a jarred chutney made from a variety of pickled vegetables.” Chutneys are a diverse group of condiments associated with the Indian subcontinent, and of course British culture absorbed and put its own spin on a lot of Indian cuisine during their colonial period. In my experience, British chutneys have tended more toward the sweet and fruity, but have been tasty, and recognizably derived from their more traditional Indian counterparts.

So I was excited to try Branston pickle, and I ordered a jar from Amazon well before it was time for me to start working with this sandwich. What “jarred pickled chutney” doesn’t tell you is that Branston Pickle actually consists of various pickled vegetables–carrots, onions, cauliflower, gherkins, rutabaga–in brown sauce.

Now I’ve had a love/hate relationship with British sandwiches for a while, and much of both the love and the hate has been tied up with my reaction to brown sauce. I’ve gotten to the point where I actually enjoy it, once in a while, in certain circumstances. Encountering it when I was expecting something a little more South Asian-inflected was, well, disappointing. But I soldiered on. I picked up a nice big hunk of a sharp cheddar in Wisconsin a few weeks ago specifically for these sandwiches. Brits and other purists will tell you that you need to use British cheddar for this sandwich, but I live within an hour’s drive of one of the great cheese-producing areas of the world and this is an excellent cheddar.

And I actually developed a taste for the sandwich at first. Once I got over the shock of brown sauce–fucking BROWN SAUCE?–when I was expecting chutney, Branston Pickle turned out to be quite good. I had several sandwiches on toasted slices of the simple oat bran bread that’s my go-to from the supermarket and loved them. I don’t think you’re normally supposed to toast the bread, but I think this sandwich really requires something a bit more robust than squishy supermarket bread, so I toasted it to make it stand up to the aggressive ingredients better.

Then I decided to bake some better bread, and that’s when the problem started. Not because of the bread–my baking has gotten quite good–but because I was burning myself out on Branston Pickle much too quickly for the good of this post.

First I made an Irish brown bread from a recipe that I found on the James Beard Foundation’s website.

This was a dense, rustic, no-knead loaf made with whole wheat flour, water, molasses, salt, and yeast. It was moist on the inside with a hard crust and a lot of flavor. Denser than you’d want for a lot of sandwiches, probably, but perfect for this.

Branston pickle isn’t pretty, and with the salty and sour pickled vegetables and the malty, sweet and savory brown sauce, a little goes a long way. Putting it together with a strong, rustic bread and a sharp cheddar, you end up with a lot of flavor in one simple sandwich.

I ended up chatting on Twitter about these sandwiches with my friend, Machinefabriek enthusiast and amateur snooker commentator Nick Fawbert. Nick’s been a vegetarian for 25 years or more and had nothing to contribute when I interviewed my English friends about British Rail Sandwiches, but it turns out he’s a fan of cheese & pickle.

@JimTheBeerGuy I do, and I like them! With cheddar ideally. I'm also an occasional user of Branston's Hot Chilli and Jalapeno relish.

— nickinko (@nickinko) April 13, 2015

@JimTheBeerGuy A nice freshly baked bloomer would do me fine. Nothing else, no, I'm a puritan. It's good in a Ploughman's too, but I digress

— nickinko (@nickinko) April 13, 2015

I’d never heard of bloomer bread, but between my own research and a video Nick sent, I was able to recreate it at home. And it’s very good.

Bloomer bread is another rustic type of bread, but shaped by hand rather than a loaf pan, heavily kneaded, and with parallel diagonal slashes across the top. It’s also dense, though less dense than the brown bread was, and crusty.

Given the irregular shape, one has to be a bit more creative in arranging the cheese. I understand many Brits grate cheese for their sandwiches, but I prefer the solidity of sliced cheese.

I asked a few more British friends about cheese and pickle sandwiches and didn’t get much in the way of new information or suggestions. It’s a pretty simple sandwich, without much variation, and so British it makes my teeth hurt.

But the very Britishness of the sandwich did give me an idea. Why is the cheese and pickle sandwich so British, when–as discussed earlier in the article–pickles are so universal, and so many cultures have their own variations on bread and cheese as well? I thought about Thom’s excellent post on pimento cheese from a few weeks ago. The pimentos are sold in jars of brine–isn’t pimento cheese essentially both cheese and pickle in the same package?

What are the parts of a cheese and pickle sandwich? There’s the cheese and bread, pretty straightforward. Then there’s the pickle. In the case of Branston pickle, it’s a mix of pickled vegetables in a sauce. I think any regional variant should use something similar, rather than simply a pickled vegetable. And several ideas immediately came to mind. German: Limburger and sauerkraut on Pumpernickel bread, maybe with some mustard to satisfy the sauce requirement. Danish: blue cheese with pickled cucumbers (or herring? nah) on Rugbrød with remoulade. Mexican: Pickled jalapenos and cheese sauce on a fried tortilla? Wait, that’s nachos.

So what would a Southern US version of cheese and pickle sandwich using pimento cheese look like? I made some pimento cheese using Thom’s instructions, some buttermilk biscuits, and used some of my homemade chow chow–a sweet and sour pickled vegetable relish with onions, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, and peppers in my version–to make what I thought was a pretty good Southern take on the cheese and pickle sandwich.

This was delicious–the spicy pimento cheese and the sweet/tartness of the chow chow were a good match for each other and for the rich butteriness of the biscuit. It was messy–the pimento cheese and chow chow are both runny to begin with, and the hot biscuit only amplified that. This sandwich is definitely worth a try though.

And what about India, home of the chutney that may or may not have inspired Branston’s to make their pickle? India has many types of bread and many types of pickles. They have multiple types of cheese as well, though Paneer is the first one I thought of. Naan seemed like the best Indian bread to use for sandwiches, and as far as the pickle, there was never any doubt what I’d use. Patak’s Garlic Relish is one of the world’s great condiments.

Pickled garlic, onions, raisins, and dates in a spicy, oily sauce–this stuff is crazy good, and addictive. I go through several jars a year, and in fact I’d just finished one. I stopped by my local Indian market, Swagat Foods in Oak Forest, to pick up the relish, some paneer, and frozen naan, as I do not have a tandoor to bake it properly from scratch. I heated up 2 pieces of naan, then buttered them and added the relish and sliced paneer.

This was good. Really good. The paneer has a very mild flavor, but the garlic relish more than makes up for it, and the naan has fantastic texture. However, I was even happier the next day when I pan-fried some paneer (it browns nicely and doesn’t melt at all) and rolled it up into a single naan with scrambled eggs and garlic relish, thus taking it out of cheese and pickle territory and into, what, breakfast wrap? shudder

I naturally thought about doing a Chicago version as well. First, I thought about Merkt’s cheddar and neon green relish on steamed poppy seed hot dog buns, but not only is Merkt’s Cheddar a product of Wisconsin, no matter how ubiquitous it might be on Chicago burger & hot dog joint menus, the idea seemed kind of silly. Especially when there’s a pickled condiment that is far more representative of Chicago than the neon green relish.

If you haven’t read the word giardiniera on this site, you haven’t been paying attention. Giardiniera is maybe the best thing about Chicago, and people in other places have either never heard of it or are probably thinking of something completely different when they say giardiniera. In Chicago, giardiniera is a spicy mix of pickled vegetables (always celery, usually carrot and cauliflower, sometimes olives or mushrooms or bell peppers) and chili peppers in oil–it’s the condiment of choice on an Italian beef sandwich, it’s a fantastic pizza topping, it’s great in sub sandwiches, breaded steak sandwiches, Mother-in-Laws, etc., and it’s something that is taken pretty seriously around here. If Patak’s Garlic Relish is “one of” the world’s great condiments, giardiniera is The One. The Greatest.

For a Chicago-style cheese and pickle sandwich, there’s really no other option. Giardiniera is to Chicago sandwiches as brown sauce is to English ones. For the cheese, I chose provolone, ubiquitous on Chicago sub sandwiches, and a natural partner to giardiniera. For the bread, I used gravy bread.

What’s gravy bread? Essentially, gravy bread is an Italian beef sandwich without the beef. It’s a French roll dipped in jus. I melted the provolone to get it to stick to the bread, soaked it in the jus from a tub of Papa Charlie’s Italian Beef, then added the giardiniera.

It was glorious, and gloriously messy, but in a very Chicago kind of way–a sandwich that most definitely required the Chicago Lean. I couldn’t help thinking while I ate it though, that it would be much better with some beef on it, and oh look! I just happened to have a tub of sliced beef and some hot jus on hand.

Of course, it turns out that my Chicago-style cheese & pickle sandwich with beef added is just an Italian Beef sandwich with cheese.

So maybe the cheese and pickle sandwich is something that only could have happened in England. It is essentially a mobile version of the Ploughman’s Lunch, after all. And maybe the trick to appreciating British sandwiches better is to pace myself and take lots of breaks, rather than eating them obsessively in bursts as usual.

So I’m breaking up with you, British sandwiches. At least until June, when we’ll be covering the chip butty. (I’ll call you)