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Cocoanut Sandwiches
Mix together in a bowl, one small cream cheese, quarter of a cupful of shredded cocoanut, the same amount of chopped walnut meats and of chopped raisins. When well mixed, add a tablespoonful of lemon juice. Mix again and spread on thin slices of bread, white or brown, or one of each.
A tea sandwich filling of the sort that filled afternoon menus in the 1920s and 30s. Almost nothing here has changed except the size of the cheese package and the sugar content of the coconut.
- "One small cream cheese"This means one of the small foil-wrapped bricks sold at the time, roughly 3 ounces. The standard American package today is 8 ounces, so use a little over a third of one, or scale the other ingredients up if you want the whole block.
- CocoanutShredded coconut of this period was often sold sweetened and moist, though unsweetened desiccated was also available. Sweetened flake will make a distinctly dessert-like sandwich; unsweetened desiccated coconut gives a drier, more savoury filling that suits brown bread better.
- Soften the cheese firstCold cream cheese will not take chopped nuts and fruit without tearing. Let it come to room temperature for twenty minutes and beat it smooth before anything else goes in, or the mixture will not spread on thin bread.
- The lemon juiceA tablespoon is a fair amount of acid for this quantity, and that is the point: it cuts the coconut and the raisin sugar. Add it last, as the recipe says, once everything else is well mixed.
- Chop fineRaisins and walnuts both want to be chopped smaller than seems necessary. Anything larger than a pea will drag the crumb of thinly sliced bread when you spread.
- Bread and assemblyCut the crusts after filling, not before, and press the closed sandwich gently before slicing. "One of each" gives the two-tone sandwich that was fashionable on tea tables at the time.
- YieldThree quarter-cups of solids plus the cheese make appreciably more than a cup of filling, enough for several rounds of sandwiches cut into fingers or triangles.
- Making aheadThe filling improves after an hour in the refrigerator as the raisins soften and the coconut absorbs moisture. Assembled sandwiches should be covered with a damp cloth and eaten the same day; the lemon juice will otherwise soak the bread.
Sandwiches like this belong to the era when the afternoon tea table, not the lunch counter, was where a hostess was judged. Mass-produced shredded coconut, sold sweetened and packed in tins, had been on American grocery shelves since the late nineteenth century, and cookbook writers used it freely in places a modern cook would think of as sweet only. The result is characteristic of the period's tea sandwiches: a soft, spreadable base carrying chopped fruit and nuts, sharpened with citrus, and cut small enough to be eaten standing up.