Home › Sandwiches › Sweet Sandwiches
Sweet Sandwiches
Mix ½ lb. dates, 12 lb. figs (both chopped), 1 C cocoanut, 1 T melted chocolate, 1/2 C sugar, 1 C pecan meats (cut). Put in double boiler and simmer ten minutes, stirring well. Remove from fire and when slightly cool, beat until creamy. Spread on graham or rye bread.
A sweet sandwich filling of the church-supper era, closer to a dried-fruit paste than anything spreadable straight from the bowl. One quantity in the printed text is almost certainly a misprint and needs fixing before you start.
- The figs are a typo"12 lb. figs" against 1½ lb. dates makes no sense in a filling of this size; the original almost certainly read ½ lb. Use ½ lb (about 8 oz) dried figs, stems trimmed off, and treat the printed figure as a compositor's error.
- UnitsC is cup, T is tablespoon. So: 1 cup shredded coconut, 1 tablespoon melted chocolate, ½ cup sugar, 1 cup chopped pecans.
- CocoanutPeriod recipes generally mean dried shredded coconut. Modern sweetened flake will push an already sweet filling further; unsweetened desiccated coconut is likely nearer the original.
- Melted chocolateA tablespoon of melted unsweetened baking chocolate, not chips and not cocoa powder. It is there for color and depth rather than to make the filling chocolate-flavored.
- Add liquid or it will scorchAdd liquid if it looks dry -- No liquid is called for, and the double boiler is what keeps the sugar and fruit from catching. If the mixture seems too stiff to break down in the ten minutes given, a little water or orange juice will help it come to a paste.
- Chop before you cookBoth fruits should be finely chopped first — the instruction says so in passing, and whole or coarsely cut figs will not soften enough in ten minutes to beat smooth.
- Beating while warm"Slightly cool" means warm enough to still be pliable. Let it go cold and the paste stiffens past the point where beating does anything; a food processor will do the work in seconds if it has set up.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. The quantity is generous, enough to fill a large number of small sandwiches, and leftover filling can be covered and refrigerated; it spreads better if left at room temperature for a few minutes.
Sweet sandwiches belong to a narrow window in American entertaining when the sandwich was a tea-table and reception food rather than lunch, and church cookbooks like this one are full of them: fruit pastes, nut and mayonnaise mixtures, cream cheese and pimiento, all cut small and often crustless. The graham or rye called for here is telling — a dark, faintly nutty bread was thought the right foil for dried fruit, and graham flour carried an additional aura of wholesomeness inherited from the mid-century health reformers. Dates and figs were both cheap imported staples by the 1910s and 1920s, arriving pressed in blocks or strung in boxes, and a filling built on them cost little while reading as generous. Compiled cookbooks of this kind were sold to raise money for the congregation, each recipe contributed by a member, which is why quantities are terse, methods assume you have made something similar, and typographical slips like the figs here went uncorrected.