Benedictine Spread

At Benedict’s, not only could you get a tea sandwich made with
Benedictine spread, you could also buy candy at the extensive
candy counter running down one side of the restaurant.
(From the R. G. Potter Collection at the University of Louisville.)

Unusual in the world of recipe attribution, there can be no mistake as to the provenance of Benedictine sandwich spread. It is named for its creator, Jennie Benedict, native daughter of Kentucky.

Jennie Benedict was born into pre-Civil War Kentucky, in a small town just outside Louisville. Apparently an entrepreneur at heart, in her early thirties she borrowed $381 (which in today’s money would be in the neighborhood of $9,000) to build a catering kitchen in her backyard. She passed out hundreds of circulars inviting people to come to her for anything from “a cup of chocolate to....sandwiches on short order....to dainty dishes for the invalid.”

Less than a decade later, Benedict had moved her catering business to downtown Louisville. Then, in 1911, she opened a swell new establishment called Benedict’s, which had an elaborate soda fountain and such modernities as “electric and gas lights, electric fans, and all those dainty accessories that are so pleasing and gratifying to the eye.” (Imagine being gratified by the sight of an electric fan. It is to wonder.)

In 1925 (just 3 years before her death), Benedict sold her business for $50,000 (just under $700K in today’s money) and retired to a home she named Dream Acre (also the title of her autobiography, The Road to Dream Acre).

In addition to her incredible legacy as an influential woman in business (she was the first woman in the South to be elected to a city’s Board of Trade), she also wrote books, worked at a local newspaper, supervised a nursing school, worked for charities—and created a cucumber sandwich spread that for some reason captured the attention and devotion of the city of Louisville.

I have no evidence as to who came up with the name Benedictine Spread, but I’m going to hope it was Jennie Benedict, because that means she had a lovely sense of humor, too: In addition to “Benedictine” being derived from her last name, it is also the name of a green liqueur made by Benedictine monks. So it’s a visual gag as well, since the spread is tinted green.

The recipe I used is based on one in Benedict’s cookbook, The Blue Ribbon Cookbook (1902), although Benedictine Spread only appears in one edition of the book. (I wonder why it was taken out of other editions. Hmmm.)

Benedictine Spread

Makes 1 cup
Note that modern renditions of the recipe include the whole chopped-up onion and cucumber, not just the juice. But certainly in the catering and restaurant business, all that wet stuff would have been a liability when making a big batch.

1 Persian (mini) cucumber
Salt
2- to 3-ounce chunk white or yellow onion, roughly chopped
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
Pinch of cayenne pepper
2 drops green food coloring (optional)

1. Cut the unpeeled (!) cucumber into chunks and put them in a mini food processor. Sprinkle with 1/8 teaspoon salt. Whizz to make a smooth-ish puree and transfer to a small bowl. Clean the processor and add the onion chunks and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Whizz to a smooth-ish puree and transfer to a bowl. Set both aside for 30 minutes to pull the juices out.
2. Set a fine-mesh sieve over a small bowl and push the cucumber puree gently into it to extract the juice. In a separate bowl, in a fine-mesh sieve, do the same with the onion.
3. Place the cream cheese in a bowl. Measure out 3 tablespoons of the cucumber juice and 1 tablespoon of the onion juice (discard any remainder) and add to the cream cheese along with the cayenne and food coloring (if you want, though Jennie Benedict definitely added food coloring to hers). Mix all the ingredients with a fork until well blended. Taste and add more salt if you think it needs it. (Just keep in mind where you're going to be using this. On a cucumber tea sandwich? Then you might want more salt. But on a ham sandwich?)

Pinkish Benedictine: Make the juices as directed, but peel the cucumber and use a red onion. To the onion puree, add 1/4 teaspoon red wine vinegar (to help set the onion's reddish color). Omit the cayenne and use 1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika instead. The resulting spread will be faintly pink. If you want to push it, you could add an itty-bitty drop of red food coloring.