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Nut-and-Fruit Sandwiches
Dates, nuts, figs, raisins, chopped up together or separately, spread between very thin slices of buttered white or Graham bread, and seasoned with a pinch of salt, are found to be very palatable.
A sketch rather than a formula, but a workable one: dried fruit and nuts chopped fine enough to hold together, pressed between thin buttered bread. A few points make it behave.
- ProportionsThe recipe gives none, and allows the fruits and nuts to be used together or separately. Roughly equal parts dried fruit and nuts by volume is a safe default: fruit-heavy fillings tend towards paste and can soak thin bread, while nuts alone have little to bind them.
- ChoppingChop by hand or pulse briefly in a food processor. Run it too long and the dates and figs release enough sugar to make a sticky mass that tears thin bread.
- Graham breadIn this period Graham bread means a coarse whole-wheat loaf made from unsifted flour, named for the dietary reformer Sylvester Graham. Any dense whole-wheat sandwich loaf stands in.
- The butter is structuralButter both cut faces right to the edge. It seals the crumb against moisture from the fruit, which matters if the sandwiches sit more than an hour.
- Figs and datesRemove the hard stem nub from dried figs and check dates for pits, including those sold as pitted. Both benefit from a short soak in hot water if they have dried stiff, then drain and pat dry before chopping.
- NutsWalnuts, pecans or almonds all suit. Toasting them lightly at 350F for eight to ten minutes sharpens the flavour against the sweetness of the fruit.
- The saltDo not skip it. A pinch worked into the filling is the only thing keeping this from reading as dessert.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup of filling fills six to eight sandwiches. Trim the crusts and cut into fingers or triangles for tea; they keep a few hours wrapped in a damp cloth under a plate.
Sweet sandwiches of this kind belong to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century tea table, when the sandwich had expanded well past cold meat into a whole category of dainty fillings served at afternoon receptions, church socials and picnics. Dates, figs and raisins were among the few fruits available year-round in the American pantry, arriving dried in boxes and pressed slabs, and they turn up constantly in the sandwich chapters of household compilations from this era. The suggestion of Graham bread points at another current: the health-reform movement, which promoted unsifted whole-wheat flour and treated nuts and fruit as a wholesome alternative to meat. A filling like this let a hostess satisfy both the fashion for delicate sandwiches and the period's interest in what was then called scientific eating.