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Rose-Leaf Sandwiches
Flavor the butter with rose petals according to the directions previously given. Spread both bits of bread lightly with it and put upon them three or four candied rose petals. If lady-fingers are used, brush them over with white of egg and sugar mixed together. Use but little sugarjust enough to hold the fingers together. The Turkish rose petals that come in little jars are particularly dainty, and adapted to this purpose.
Garnish the dish on which they are served with rosebuds and leaves.
A flower sandwich from the era when afternoon tea food was judged mainly on prettiness. The whole thing hangs on the rose butter, which is made by scent transfer rather than by mixing anything in.
- The rose butterThe "directions previously given" are not reproduced here, but the standard period method was to pack butter in a covered dish between layers of fresh, dry, fragrant petals and leave it cold for several hours or overnight, then lift the petals away. The butter takes up mainly perfume; chopping petals into it gives a different and much weaker result. A drop or two of true rose water in softened butter gets close if you have no usable roses.
- Which rosesOnly untreated, strongly scented garden roses are worth using. Florist roses are grown with systemic pesticides not cleared for food and are usually bred for form rather than scent. Damask and rugosa types carry the most perfume.
- Candied and jarred petalsThe "Turkish rose petals that come in little jars" are most likely a rose petal preserve of the kind still sold in Middle Eastern groceries (Turkish gul receli; the related South Asian sweet is gulkand). Crystallized petals from a cake-decorating supplier stand in for the candied ones.
- The breadAssume a fine-crumbed white sandwich loaf, sliced thin, crusts trimmed, cut into small rectangles or rounds after filling. "Both bits of bread" means both slices get butter; if you use the jarred preserve rather than candied petals, that also helps keep moisture out of the crumb.
- Lady-fingers variantThis is a second version, not a step: two savoiardi sandwiched with sweetened egg white in place of bread and butter. The egg white is never cooked, so use pasteurized whites, or brush with a little warmed rose preserve instead.
- Yield and timingThe recipe gives no quantities; as a rough guide, a quarter pound of scented butter and a small jar of petals will fill somewhere around two dozen small sandwiches. Make them the same day and keep them covered with a damp cloth; rose perfume fades fast and thin bread dries faster.
Flower cookery had a long run in English and American kitchens, and by the turn of the twentieth century it survived mainly in the tea sandwich, where scent and color did the work that flavor does elsewhere. Rose petal conserves and rose water reached American pantries by way of Ottoman and Persian confectionery, which is why the recipe reaches for "Turkish rose petals" in jars rather than asking the cook to candy her own. The scent-transfer method used here for the butter is the same principle French perfumers called enfleurage, and it appears in household books for flavoring sugar and cream as well. It belongs to a moment when domestic-science writers were codifying the sandwich as a genre and cataloguing dozens of variants, ornamental ones included.