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Apricot Butter
1/2 Cup Dried Apricots, Soaked and Drained 2 Tablespoons Orange Juice 1/2 Cup Ground Cocoanut 1/2 Cup Chopped Nuts 1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice 1/2 Teaspoon Grated Lemon Rind 1/2 Teaspoon Grated Orange Rind Put fruit, cocoanut and nuts through food chopper; mix well with lemon juice, orange juice and grated rind. (Makes 1 cup-enough for 30 sandwiches.) Cuts of Meat and Their Uses.
Every housekeeper-in fact everyone who has marketing to doshould know something of the cuts of all common meats, and the most desirable way of preparing each for the table. In the illustrations below are shown the location of these cuts. 21 3 4 5 67815 22 17 5 2 18 19 9 12 16 13 10 11 20 4 3 7 1 2 8
Despite the name and the chapter it sits in, this is an uncooked sandwich spread rather than a boiled fruit butter. Everything happens in one pass through a grinder.
- No cooking at allNothing is heated, so the flavour depends entirely on the apricots. Use good dried fruit, and soak it in hot water for 20-30 minutes until plump before draining well; excess water thins the paste.
- "Butter" here means spreadA fruit butter normally means fruit pulp cooked down until thick. This one borrows the name for texture only.
- Ground cocoanutThe recipe specifies only ground cocoanut, which could be fresh grated coconut put through the chopper. Unsweetened desiccated coconut works; sweetened flake will push the mixture noticeably sugary, so cut the quantity if you use it.
- Food chopper vs. food processorA hand-cranked chopper gives a coarse, distinct grind. A processor turns the same ingredients to paste in seconds, so pulse rather than run it, and grind the apricots first since they are the toughest item.
- NutsThe recipe leaves the nut unspecified; walnuts or pecans suit it. Toasting them lightly first is not in the original but improves a spread that gets no heat elsewhere.
- Yield claimOne cup across 30 sandwiches works out to roughly a teaspoon and a half each, which assumes the thin, tea-sandwich scale of the period. For ordinary sandwiches, count on 8 to 10.
- KeepingWith no sugar cooked in and no seal, this is a refrigerator item. Covered and chilled, it holds about a week; the citrus juice keeps the apricot colour from dulling.
Cookbooks of the early twentieth century were often sold as complete starter manuals, which is why recipes of very different kinds sit alongside charts of meat cuts. This spread belongs to the fashion for ground-fruit sandwich fillings that ran through American entertaining from roughly the 1900s to the 1930s, when afternoon teas, card parties and church socials called for trays of small crustless sandwiches that could be made ahead. Dried apricots, coconut and nuts were all shelf-stable pantry goods a new household would already have laid in, and the food chopper clamped to the kitchen table was the appliance that made such mixtures quick.