Fig Sandwiches
Remove the stems and chop the figs fine. Put in a double boiler with a little water and cook until a paste is formed. Add a few drops of lemon juice; set aside; when cool spread on thin slices of buttered bread.
A tea-table filling rather than a cake, written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you would judge quantities by eye. The only real technique is getting the figs to a spreadable paste without scorching them.
- No quantities givenAs a working ratio, 8 oz dried figs to about 1/2 cup water and 1 teaspoon lemon juice makes roughly a cup of paste, enough for 8 to 10 small sandwiches. Add the water in stages; too much and you get jam that soaks the bread.
- Which figsAlmost certainly dried figs rather than fresh, given the added water and the long cooking to a paste. Calimyrna or Smyrna types give a nuttier, less seedy paste than Black Mission. Soaking them in hot water for 20 minutes before chopping cuts the cooking time considerably.
- The double boiler mattersFig paste is high in sugar and catches on direct heat almost immediately. Over simmering water it cannot scorch, though it will want a good while -- expect something on the order of half an hour. A heavy saucepan over very low heat works if you stir it constantly.
- Stems and skinsThe stem end stays woody however long you cook it, so cut it out rather than trimming it flush. A food processor after cooking will smooth out any tough skin the chopping missed.
- The lemon juice is not optional"A few drops" is doing real work here: it cuts the flatness of cooked dried fruit and keeps the paste from tasting cloying. Taste and add more if it seems dull.
- Cool it completelyWarm paste melts the butter and turns the bread to pulp. Spread only when the filling is fully at room temperature, and butter the bread right up to the edges so it seals.
- Bread and cuttingThe recipe asks only for thin slices of buttered bread; a close-grained white sandwich loaf suits it best. Chill the assembled sandwiches briefly under a damp cloth, then trim the crusts and cut into fingers or triangles.
- KeepingThe paste keeps a week covered in the refrigerator and is easier to spread if left out for half an hour first. Assembled sandwiches are best within a few hours.
Filled tea sandwiches like this belong to the era of the formal afternoon reception, when a hostess was expected to produce something dainty, sweet and unmessy that could sit on a plate for an hour. Dried figs were a familiar and inexpensive pantry item in American kitchens by the early twentieth century, supplied both by imports from Smyrna and, increasingly, by California growing after Smyrna-type figs were established there commercially; cookbooks of the period use them freely in fillings, puddings and steamed cakes. A closely related fig-and-lemon paste, cooked stiffer, was also used as a filling for fig bars and rolled cookies.