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Ginger Sandwiches
Cut preserved Canton ginger in very thin slices. Prepare as other sandwiches.
A two-line instruction that assumes you already know the house method for tea sandwiches: thin-cut buttered bread, crusts off, filling laid on, cut into fingers or triangles. The only real decision is the ginger.
- Canton gingerYoung ginger rhizome preserved in heavy sugar syrup, exported through the port of Canton (Guangzhou). Sold today as stem ginger in syrup, in jars; the drier sugar-rolled crystallised ginger also works but is sharper and chewier.
- Slice it thin, and coldPreserved ginger is slippery and fibrous. Chill the pieces first and use a thin sharp knife, cutting across the grain so the fibres are short and the slices lie flat. Blot the syrup off or the bread turns wet.
- The bread and butter"Prepare as other sandwiches" points the reader back to the chapter's general method rather than restating it: thin bread, butter, crusts off, cut small. Soft butter rather than melted will keep the syrup from soaking the crumb.
Preserved ginger in syrup reached American and British kitchens through the China trade, and the jars were familiar enough that Canton ginger could be named without explanation. It appears here among the sandwiches because the afternoon tea table of the period leaned heavily on sweet and novelty fillings served alongside savoury ones, all cut in the same thin fingers and all built on the same buttered bread. The recipe's brevity is the point: the sandwich chapter establishes a single technique early on, then runs through fillings in a line or two apiece, which is how a cooking-school text taught method rather than dishes.