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Chocolate Sandwich
1/3 lb. Walter Baker & Co.'s Vanilla Sweet Chocolate, 2 tablespoons butter, 1/3 cup peanut butter, Speck of salt.
Melt chocolate in butter over hot water, add salt and peanut butter, stir until smooth. When cool spread between butter thins for afternoon tea.
A three-ingredient filling for sandwich cookies, and the only technical demand is keeping water away from the chocolate.
- The chocolateWalter Baker's Vanilla Sweet Chocolate was a sweetened eating chocolate flavored with vanilla; a modern sweet or semisweet dark bar is the nearest stand-in, though the exact cacao content is not recorded. One-third pound is 5 1/3 ounces, about 150 g.
- Melt over hot water, not boilingSet the bowl over water that is steaming but not bubbling, and keep condensation and stray drops out of the bowl; a few drops of water can seize chocolate into a grainy paste.
- Peanut butterAt this period this meant plain ground peanuts, sometimes with salt. Natural peanut butter gives the closest result; modern stabilized brands are sweeter and will push the filling toward candy. Stir a natural jar well before measuring so you are not spooning in oil.
- The speck of saltA few grains, no more than 1/8 teaspoon, and less or none if the peanut butter is already salted.
- Butter thinsThin, crisp, lightly sweet butter wafers. Any plain thin cookie works, but avoid anything soft, since the filling firms as it cools and will crack a yielding cookie.
- Cooling and spreadingLet the mixture cool to room temperature until it is thick and spreadable, like frosting. Warm, it runs off the edges; refrigerated, it sets too hard to spread without tearing the wafers.
- YieldAbout a cup of filling, enough for 20 to 24 sandwiches with thin two-inch wafers. It keeps covered at room temperature for several days and can be softened briefly over warm water.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, issued to promote its chocolate, and like most such pamphlets every chocolate call is a call for a named house product. The pairing here is worth noting: commercial peanut butter was still a comparatively new grocery item in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century, first promoted as an easily digested protein food and only gradually moving into sweets and tea-table cookery. A filling of sweet chocolate and ground peanuts spread between butter thins belongs to the era's afternoon tea, when a hostess was expected to produce something small and sweet without heating the oven.