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Sweet Whole Wheat Sandwiches
Thin slices of whole wheat bread spread with unsalted butter and filled with a mixture of chopped raisins, almonds, orange juice, a little grated orange rind and enough olive oil to blend well together.
Bread made with Lake of the Woods Breakfast Food could be used satisfactorily. See Breakfast Food recipes.
A filling recipe with no quantities at all, in the style of the tea-sandwich sections of the period. The proportions are yours to set, but the balance of fruit to nut to liquid is what decides whether it spreads or crumbles.
- Working proportionsAbout 1 cup raisins to 1/2 cup blanched almonds, the juice of half an orange and a teaspoon of grated rind makes enough for roughly a dozen small sandwiches. Add the oil a teaspoon at a time; the mixture should hold together like a coarse paste, not glisten.
- Olive oil as binderModern extra-virgin oil is assertive and will fight the orange; a light or refined olive oil, or a neutral nut oil, sits closer to the mild oil the filling seems to want.
- Chop, or use a processor brieflyThe original assumes hand-chopping on a board, which leaves visible pieces. A food processor will turn raisins to a gummy mass in seconds, so pulse the almonds first, then add the raisins for only two or three short pulses.
- AlmondsBlanch and skin them, or use whole natural almonds and accept the flecks of brown. Toasting them lightly at 350F for 6-8 minutes is not in the original but improves the flavour considerably.
- Unsalted butter matters hereUnsalted butter -- The recipe calls for it without saying why; spread thin it also helps keep the juicy filling off the bread. Have it soft enough to spread without tearing the slice.
- Lake of the Woods Breakfast FoodA proprietary wheat breakfast cereal from the same mill that published this book; the page gives no detail of its form. Bread made with a cooked cracked-wheat or bulgur porridge in the dough is a reasonable modern stand-in.
- Cutting and holdingChill the assembled sandwiches under a damp cloth for half an hour before trimming the crusts and cutting into fingers or triangles. They keep a few hours; longer and the orange juice works into the bread.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal, and like most flour-company books it existed to sell flour and the company's other cereal lines — hence the aside recommending Lake of the Woods Breakfast Food, and the cross-reference to its own recipes. The sandwich section belongs to the era of the afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon, when a sandwich meant something small, crustless and sweet as often as savoury. Whole wheat bread appears here not as a health food in the modern sense but as part of the period's enthusiasm for "graham" and whole-meal flours, promoted through the late nineteenth century as more wholesome than white.