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Fruit Sandwiches
Soak any kind or several kinds of dried fruit in water for two hours; drain and dry thoroughly; moisten with orange or lemon or a little grape juice, and spread on thin slices of buttered bread.
A tea sandwich, not a cake, despite where it sits in the book. The whole thing hinges on getting the fruit dry enough that it does not soak the bread.
- Dry the fruit properly"Drain and dry thoroughly" is the instruction that decides whether this works. Press the soaked fruit between clean towels and blot it; any free water turns the bread to paste within minutes.
- Chop it, though the recipe does not say soWhole soaked figs, dates or apricots will not spread on thin bread. Chop fine or run through a food processor to a coarse paste, then moisten.
- "Any kind of dried fruit"Figs, dates, raisins, prunes, apricots and currants were among the dried fruits commonly kept in this period. Modern dried fruit is often sold already soft and treated with sulphur or added sugar, so a shorter soak of 30 minutes may be plenty.
- The juice is a seasoning, not a soakAdd citrus or grape juice a teaspoon at a time until the mixture just holds together. Grape juice was a common non-alcoholic household bottling then and gives colour as much as flavour.
- Butter both slicesButter here is a moisture barrier as well as a flavour. Have it soft enough to spread thin without tearing the bread, and cover the surface edge to edge.
- BreadA close-crumbed white loaf, sliced thin, suits this; the recipe specifies only "thin slices of buttered bread". Day-old bread cuts thinner and cleaner than fresh.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup of prepared fruit fills six to eight sandwiches, which cut into 24 to 32 fingers or triangles. Trim the crusts, cover with a damp cloth, and serve the same day.
Sandwich sections swell in American cookbooks of the first quarter of the twentieth century, driven by the afternoon tea, the club luncheon and the packed picnic basket, and fillings that used pantry staples rather than fresh meat had the advantage of keeping. Dried figs, dates and raisins were year-round goods in a way that soft fruit was not, and a filling of soaked, chopped dried fruit bound with a little juice gave a sweet sandwich that would sit on a plate without weeping. Mrs. Fryer's book was issued in loose-leaf form, a format some publishers of the period favoured.