Home › Sandwiches › Honey Sandwiches
Honey Sandwiches
Spread one bit of white bread with honey pressed from the comb with a wooden spoon, the other bit
The text as printed breaks off mid-sentence, so the second slice is left to the cook's imagination — in this book's other honey sandwiches it is almost always butter or cream cheese. What survives is enough to work from.
- The missing halfThe instruction ends at "the other bit," so the intended second spread is lost. Softened butter or a plain cream cheese is the period-appropriate partner and keeps the honey from soaking through.
- Honey pressed from the combThis means comb honey crushed and strained rather than the liquid honey sold in jars. Buying comb honey and pressing it yourself gives a thicker, slightly cloudy honey; ordinary raw honey is a reasonable substitute, and a firm creamed honey spreads best of all.
- Why a wooden spoonThe text gives no reason. Wood will not react with honey and crushes comb wax without shredding it into the honey, which may be the thinking; any non-reactive spoon does the job now.
- BreadThe text specifies only white bread. A close-grained sandwich loaf, cut thin, suits this best; day-old bread slices more cleanly than fresh.
- KeepingHoney draws moisture and will make bread soggy within an hour or two. Assemble close to serving, and cover with a damp cloth rather than refrigerating, which stales the crumb.
- Raw honey and infantsUncooked honey should not be given to children under one year because of the risk of infant botulism. Older children and adults are not normally at risk.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. As a working guide, about 2 tablespoons each of honey and butter will fill six thin tea sandwiches, cut into quarters or fingers.
Honey sandwiches belong to the afternoon tea table of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when American cookbooks devoted whole chapters to bread-and-butter trifles served with tea rather than at meals. The instruction to press honey from the comb suggests something of the period: comb honey was a standard retail form well into the 1900s, sold in wooden section boxes, and extracted liquid honey only gradually displaced it as centrifugal extractors spread among beekeepers from the 1860s onward, though comb honey remained available long afterward. A sandwich that required nothing but bread, honey and a spoon had obvious appeal.