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Cupid's Butter Sandwiches
The yolks of 4 hard-boiled eggs.
1 cup of butter. 1/3 a cup of powdered sugar.
INGREDIENTS.
1 teaspoonful of orange juice.
A grating of orange rind.
Angel cakelets or slices of angel cake.
Cream the butter, gradually add the yolks of eggs, passed through a potato ricer or sieve, the sugar and orange juice. Spread upon thin slices of angel cake, prepared for sandwiches, or upon angel cakelets or fingers; press two slices together and serve at once. If allowed to stand any length of time, keep covered and in a cool place.
A sweet tea sandwich rather than a savory one: the "butter" is a creamed spread of hard-cooked yolks, butter and sugar, sandwiched between slices of angel cake. It comes together in minutes provided the butter is soft enough to take the yolks smoothly.
- QuantitiesOne cup of butter (2 sticks, 8 oz), a third of a cup of powdered sugar, four egg yolks. The recipe gives no yield; the mixture comes to roughly a cup and a half of spread, enough for a good number of small sandwiches depending on how thickly they are spread.
- Powdered sugarIn modern terms the nearest equivalent is confectioners' sugar, though the period grade sold as "powdered" was not necessarily identical to it. The point is fineness: coarse granulated sugar will not dissolve in cold butter and leaves the spread gritty.
- Softening the butterButter at about 65F creams properly; straight from the refrigerator it will seize and the yolks will stay in lumps. Do not melt it to hurry things along or the spread will separate as it cools.
- Sieving the yolksThe hinge of the recipe. Cooked yolks pushed through a fine sieve or ricer disperse into the butter as a powder; mashed with a fork they stay granular and the sandwich tastes of egg salad instead of orange cream.
- Orange rindGrate only the colored zest, avoiding the white pith beneath, and grate it directly over the bowl so the oils that spray off land in the butter.
- Cutting angel cakeAngel cake tears under a straight-edged knife. Use a long serrated blade with a sawing motion, or two forks pulled apart. The recipe asks for thin slices, but they need enough body to hold together when pressed.
- Holding and servingThe instruction to serve at once is sound: the cut cake dries quickly and the butter softens at room temperature. Covered and refrigerated the spread keeps a couple of days, but assemble the sandwiches only as they go to the table.
Janet McKenzie Hill's Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties (1899) comes from a period when the sandwich was increasingly a fixture of the afternoon tea table, the card party and the wedding reception. Alongside savory fillings, Hill gives sweet sandwiches built on cake rather than bread, of which this is one. Whether the name "Cupid's butter" points to Valentine or bridal use is a guess; the book does not say. The technique of beating sieved hard-cooked yolks into butter and sugar to make a spreadable cream without heat is an old one, found elsewhere in European baking.