Cheese and chutney in the afternoon-tea form is the cheese sandwich with the volume turned down and the crusts cut off. Where the everyday cheese-and-pickle is built thick and assertive, this is its restrained cousin: thinly sliced mature Cheddar, a thin spread of a smooth fruit chutney such as apple or mango, soft white bread buttered to the edges, pressed, trimmed square, and cut into fingers or triangles small enough to eat in two bites without a plate. The trimming is not decoration. It is the design. A crust would resist a delicate filling, and the whole point of the tea sandwich is that nothing in it should resist.
The craft is proportion and moisture control. The Cheddar is sliced thin so it folds against the bread rather than slabbing, and a mature one is chosen because a thin layer of mild cheese would vanish entirely under the chutney. The chutney is spread thin and smooth, no large fruit chunks, because a chunky pickle would tear the soft bread and break the clean line of the cut. Butter to the edges waterproofs the crumb against the chutney's sugar and acid so the sandwich survives the half hour between assembly and the table without going translucent. Everything is restrained on purpose, because this is a sandwich built for delicacy and conversation, not to fill anyone up.
The tea tray sets the limits of the variation here. Cheddar with a stripe of chutney, a milder cheese with a sweeter preserve, a cream-cheese-and-walnut finger, cucumber, egg mayonnaise: each keeps the crustless, thin, restrained frame and changes only the filling. Each deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here.