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Marmalade Sandwiches
Butter and cut white bread in thin slices, spread with orange or quince marmalade, cover with thin slices of brown bread.
A two-minute assembly whose only real technique is in the bread handling. The recipe assumes an unsliced loaf and a cook who butters before cutting.
- Butter first, then cutThe instruction is deliberate: buttering the cut face of a whole loaf and slicing afterwards lets you take slices far thinner than you could butter without tearing. With a pre-sliced sandwich loaf the point is lost, but the sandwich still works.
- How thin is thinThe recipe gives no measurement, only "thin"; slice as thinly as the loaf will allow. A thick slice turns the marmalade into the minor partner.
- Quince marmaladeIn older usage marmalade meant any stiff fruit paste, and quince was the original. Quince paste sold as membrillo or cotognata is the closest thing on a modern shelf, and being firm it will not soak the bread.
- Brown breadThe recipe does not specify which; a plain wholemeal or graham loaf suits it better than the molasses-and-rye Boston brown bread steamed in a tin. White-and-brown pairings turn up in sandwich recipes of the period, apparently for contrast.
- Butter both slicesOnly the white slice is buttered as written. Buttering the brown slice too seals it against the marmalade, which matters if the sandwiches are made more than a few minutes ahead.
- Holding and servingTrim the crusts, cut into fingers or triangles, and keep under a barely damp cloth until served.
Sweet fillings such as marmalade, jam and nut pastes let the sandwich form work without meat, which is why they recur in meatless and vegetarian cookery of the period. The white-and-brown pairing appears in books of this era, sometimes as ribbon sandwiches built in alternating layers. Quince, named here alongside orange, was still used as a preserving fruit; its high pectin content makes a paste stiff enough to slice, and quince preceded citrus in the word marmalade.