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Jelly Sandwiches
Spread sandwiches with jam or fruit jelly and sprinkle with finely chopped English walnuts; or instead of the nuts spread a thin layer of cream cheese.
Barely a recipe, more a formula, but the two variations it offers depend on ingredients that have shifted meaning since it was written. A few notes make the result worth eating rather than merely edible.
- Butter the bread firstThe instruction is silent on it, but a thin layer of softened butter on each slice keeps jelly from soaking through and turning the crumb to paste. This matters most if the sandwiches are cut ahead and held.
- English walnutsThe common walnut, Juglans regia, as distinct from the American black walnut that many households gathered themselves. The distinction was worth making when this was written; today an unlabelled bag of walnuts is generally the English type. Toast them briefly and cool before chopping to sharpen the flavor.
- Cream cheeseIn cookbooks of this period the phrase often means a fresh, unripened soft curd cheese, closer to farmer cheese or a drained fromage blanc than to the firm block sold now. Modern block cream cheese works, but let it come to room temperature or it will tear the bread.
- Jam versus jellyThe original allows either. A firm jelly spreads more cleanly and bleeds less; a loose jam wants a thicker bread and a quick eating. Avoid anything with visible syrup pooling.
- The breadAssume a fine-crumbed white sandwich loaf, sliced thin, crusts trimmed, cut into fingers or triangles. This is tea-table food, not lunch.
- Yield and holdingReckon three to four small cut sandwiches per slice pair. Cover with a barely damp cloth and refrigerate no more than a few hours.
Sandwich chapters swelled in American cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, driven by the afternoon tea, the club luncheon and the packed picnic basket, and a great many of the entries are formulas of exactly this kind: a spread, a sprinkle, an alternative. A sweet sandwich of jelly and nuts does the work a meat filling would have done at a mixed table without calling attention to what is missing. The specification of English walnuts is a reminder that in many American households the default walnut was still the black one taken from a local tree.