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Violet Sandwiches
- Prepare in the same manner as in the last number, substituting candied violets for the rose petals, and violets with green leaves for a garnish.
This is a one-line variation, so everything hinges on the preceding recipe in the book: thin bread and butter (or a sweetened cream cheese) with candied petals laid between. A few notes on sourcing and assembly.
- Read the previous entry firstThe instruction "in the same manner as in the last number" means the rose-petal sandwich immediately above it. On its own this line gives no bread, no spread and no quantities, so the base recipe has to be in front of you.
- Candied violetsThese are whole violet flowers crystallised in sugar syrup, still sold as cake decoration and often imported from France. They are hard and brittle; crush or chop the larger ones or the sandwich will not cut cleanly.
- Which violetThe flowers and young leaves meant here are sweet violet, Viola odorata, and its garden relatives. African violet (Saintpaulia) is an entirely different plant and is not used as food, so a garnish bought from a houseplant shelf is not a substitute.
- Leaves for garnish onlyThe green leaves in the original are decoration around the plate, not filling. Wash and dry them and lay them under or beside the sandwiches; they are tough and grassy to eat.
- Butter, not margarineIf the base recipe uses butter, softened unsalted butter at cool room temperature, creamed until spreadable, is what you want; anything oily will soak into thin bread.
- The breadCut a close-crumbed white loaf as thin as it will hold, crusts removed after filling rather than before. A day-old loaf slices thinner than a fresh one.
- Yield and timingThe recipe gives no quantities; assume a small tea plate's worth and slice to suit. Make them within an hour of serving and keep them under a damp cloth, as the sugar in candied petals draws moisture and the bread goes translucent.
Flower sandwiches belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian tea table, where the point of a sandwich was ornament as much as food, and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s ran long lists of them: nasturtium, rose, violet, clover. Candied violets themselves are older and are generally traced to the confectioners of Toulouse, who built a local industry on crystallising Viola odorata in sugar; by the end of the nineteenth century they were an imported staple in American and British pastry work. The sweet violet had a wider reputation in the period than it does now, appearing in syrups, pastilles and perfumes, which is why a cookbook of the period could assume its reader knew what a candied violet was and where to buy one. The telegraphic form of this entry, defining a whole dish as one substitution in the recipe above it, is characteristic of these compilations, where a single technique was spun out into a dozen named variants.