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Peanut Butter and Fruit
¼ cup figs
½ teaspoon salt
I/4 cup raisins
½ cup peanut butter
2 tablespoons light corn-sirup
Wash figs and raisins and put through a food-chopper. Add salt, peanut butter, lemon-juice and corn-sirup, and mix well.
A stiff sandwich paste of dried fruit and peanut butter, typical of the sweet fillings served at tea and in packed lunches around 1900. The ingredient list and the method do not quite agree, so read both before you start.
- The missing lemon juiceLemon juice appears in the instructions but never in the ingredient list. Start with a teaspoon or two, added at the end, and judge by taste; it is there to cut the sweetness of the figs, raisins and syrup.
- Corn-sirupThis is ordinary light corn syrup, the same product sold today. Golden syrup or mild honey substitute one for one, though both are more assertive in flavour.
- FigsDried figs, not fresh. Snip off the hard stem nubs before grinding, and if the fruit has dried out on the shelf, soak it in hot water for ten minutes and drain well or the paste will be gritty.
- Food-chopperA hand-cranked grinder with a coarse plate. A food processor does the same work in seconds; pulse rather than run it, or the fruit turns to a single gummy ball around the blade.
- Peanut butterPeriod peanut butter was unstabilised and often unsweetened, closer to today's natural grind. Modern commercial brands already carry sugar and salt, so taste before adding the full half teaspoon of salt.
- ConsistencyThe mixture will be very thick and hard to spread on soft bread. A tablespoon of water, milk or extra lemon juice loosens it without thinning the flavour.
- YieldAbout a cup of filling, enough for six to eight sandwiches on standard slices, or a dozen small tea sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Keep it covered in the refrigerator and use it within a few days.
Peanut butter moved from sanitarium food to household staple in the two decades either side of 1900, and sandwich fillings were among its commonest household uses. Butterick's book belongs to that moment, pairing peanut butter here with dried figs and raisins, both of which were reliably available year round when fresh fruit was not. The combination of ground dried fruit, nut paste and a little syrup also solved a practical problem, since such a filling does not soak through bread the way jam does, which mattered for lunches carried to school or work.