Sandwich au Cervelas
Alsace's emulsified pork sausage on a baguette: cold-smoked over beechwood, sliced into a clean pink round, and pushed against a horseradish mustard sharper than Dijon.
Alsace's emulsified pork sausage on a baguette: cold-smoked over beechwood, sliced into a clean pink round, and pushed against a horseradish mustard sharper than Dijon.
Cantal in a baguette: the Auvergne's big uncooked fourme, pressed twice and salted through the mass, crumbling from supple when young to hard and sour with age.
Medium-aged Cantal cheese sandwich.
A baguette tradition laid end-to-end with wedges of ripe Camembert, rind kept on, the bloomy-rind paste warm at the centre, a thin scrape of beurre demi-sel under it.
Brie de Meaux beat fifty cheeses at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and earned the title le roi des fromages. The lunch wedge laid wide on baguette is timed to catch the paste at its softest.
The plain blood-sausage baguette, no apple, no spice, no confit: the village charcutier's reading of boudin noir.
A poached white sausage of lean meat bound with milk and egg, gently warm on a softer crusted loaf; the protected Rethel version was registered IGP in 1998.
Sandwich au Boudin Basque: a baguette built on the Basque blood sausage, pig's head and blood bound with onion and the fruity red pepper of Espelette, often from the native Kintoa pig.
Bleu d'Auvergne crumbled into a split pain de seigle, threaded with acacia honey, eaten with a glass of red from the Côtes d'Auvergne; the volcanic-uplands cheese plate folded into a loaf.
Sandwich emphasizing Brittany's famous salted butter.
Sandwich featuring Charentes AOC butter.
Beaufort, the dense fruity cooked-curd wheel of the Savoie high pastures, sliced in slabs over a crusted baguette: one mountain cheese carrying the whole sandwich.
Beef sandwich; various preparations.
Artois lunch in three Pas-de-Calais staples: a thick spread of salted farm butter, lean local dry-cured ham, and a cornichon on the side rather than inside.
Aperitif sandwich; small bites before dinner.
Six or eight marinated vegetables off the antipasti shelf, a few slices of cured ham, a slab of mozzarella, pressed into a crusted loaf. The platter in a roll, eaten right now.
Ham, butter, and discs of Galet de la Loire, the bloomy Anjou cheese shaped like a river pebble, down a grain baguette. The sandwich angevin carries its region in a cheese, not a cured spread.
The grilling sausage arrives raw, so the cook splits it on the bars, scrapes the loose hot interior into a baguette, and the window from grill to first bite runs under two minutes.
The dark cylinder in the Vire charcutier's window is finished before it leaves the shop. Slice it like salami, lay it cold on buttered baguette, eat it cold. Nobody grills this one.
Vire tripe sausage on bread.
Whole pork intestines threaded one inside the next, telescoped into nested cylinders, so every disc shows a bullseye of pale rings. Sliced cold, shingled on buttered baguette.
Salt-cured anchovy pounded with garlic and olive oil, dragged thick across split baguette: the anchoïade is Provence's aperitif spread eaten as a held slice, the bread there to blunt the salt.
The sandwich amiénois carries a cool slice of the pâté de canard d'Amiens, the city's emblematic duck pâté en croûte, on a length of baguette. Amiens builds its charcuterie on duck.