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Tea Sandwiches
1 1/2 cups seeded raisins 1/2 cup chopped nuts juice of half a lemon Chop raisins and nuts; mix lemon juice. Spread on well buttered thinly sliced bread.
A raisin-and-nut spread of the kind that filled hundreds of afternoon tea sandwiches in the 1920s and 30s. It needs almost nothing but a sharp knife and attention to texture.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" here means the seeds have been removed, not that they are present. Ordinary supermarket raisins are already seedless, so use them as they come; 1 1/2 cups is about 8 oz.
- Chop to a paste, not a rubbleThe hinge of the recipe. Coarsely chopped raisins will roll out from between thin slices when the sandwich is cut. Chop until the fruit clumps together and holds the nuts, or pulse briefly in a food processor.
- NutsWalnuts or pecans are common choices for a filling like this. Toast them lightly if you like; the raw nut flavour is flat against so much sweetness.
- The lemon juiceAbout 1 1/2 tablespoons from half a lemon. It is there to cut the sugar and to keep the mixture from tasting cloying, not to moisten it. If the paste seems too stiff to spread, a spoonful of softened butter or cream cheese worked in helps more than extra juice.
- Well buttered breadNot an aside. Butter spread right to the edges seals the crumb so the fruit's moisture does not soak through, which matters if the sandwiches sit for an hour before serving.
- Bread and cuttingUse a firm sandwich loaf, sliced thin, crusts trimmed after filling and pressing. Cut into fingers or triangles. A day-old loaf slices thinner and cleaner than fresh.
- YieldEnough for roughly 10 to 12 full slices of bread, that is five or six sandwiches, giving about 20 to 24 small tea sandwiches.
- Holding themThe filling can be made a day ahead and refrigerated. Assembled sandwiches should be covered with a barely damp cloth and kept cool for no more than a few hours.
Raisin-and-nut fillings belong to the era when the tea sandwich was a fixed feature of the American afternoon, and cookbooks of the 1920s and 30s printed them alongside cream cheese, chopped olive and minced ham. The appeal was practical: raisins and nuts were pantry staples that kept well, so a hostess could produce a sandwich plate without a trip to the market. The insistence on thinly sliced, well-buttered bread with the crusts off reflects the standards of the period, when a tea sandwich was judged as much on its neatness as its flavour.