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Cherry Sandwiches
Mix equal parts of candied or Maraschino cherries, and chestnuts which have been boiled, blanched, and simmered in a little syrup (letting stand in this till cold). Spread long narrow saltines or thin bread and butter with the f mixture; placing two together and, if bread is used, cutting diagonally to form triangular sandwiches. A sprinkling of cress will add piquancy to the flavour.
A tea-table sandwich filling of candied cherries and chestnuts, from the era when sweet sandwiches were served alongside savoury ones. The original assumes you will chop and mash the two elements into a spreadable paste; nothing else about it is difficult.
- Make it a paste, not a mixtureChop the drained cherries and the syruped chestnuts finely, then work them together with a fork or in a food processor until the mass holds. Left in whole pieces it will roll straight out of the sandwich.
- ChestnutsBoiled and blanched here means simmered until tender, then peeled of both shell and the bitter inner skin. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts save an hour and only need the syrup step; allow about 8 oz for a plate of small sandwiches.
- The syrupA light syrup of equal parts sugar and water is enough. Simmer the peeled nuts two or three minutes, then leave them in the syrup off the heat until cold, as directed, so they sweeten through and stop crumbling.
- Maraschino cherriesModern maraschino cherries are dyed and far wetter than the ones this recipe assumes. Drain them well and blot dry, or the filling will be pink and slack. Candied (glace) cherries give a firmer, closer result.
- Saltines"Long narrow saltines" here probably means something closer to a thin soda cracker or water biscuit. Any plain cracker will do; assemble these at the last minute, as the syrup will soften them.
- BreadUse a close-crumbed white loaf sliced thin, buttered to the edges to seal it, crusts trimmed before cutting the diagonal. Buttering both slices keeps the filling from soaking through.
- The cressWatercress or garden cress, chopped and scattered over the filling before closing. Its pepperiness is what keeps this from being simply a sweet, and it is worth including rather than treating as optional.
- YieldEqual weights, roughly 8 oz cherries to 8 oz prepared chestnuts as the recipe directs, fill about a dozen small triangles "history_verdict":"hedge
Sweet sandwiches on thin buttered bread were a fixture of the afternoon tea table from the 1890s through the 1920s, and books of fruit cookery gave over pages to them: date, fig, ginger, nut and cherry. Chestnuts came into such recipes because a boiled, sweetened chestnut is starchy enough to bind, doing the work a cream cheese or nut butter would do now. The maraschino cherry named here was originally a Marasca cherry preserved in maraschino liqueur, a Dalmatian product of the Adriatic coast that reached American groceries in the nineteenth century; the bright, brined, dye-fixed version familiar today came later. The cress is the older instinct at work — a peppery leaf set against sugar, the same logic that puts watercress under game.