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Candied Fruit Sandwiches
For fancy sandwiches candied cherries, pineapple or greengages may be chopped fine, moistened with orange juice and spread over thin slices of buttered bread or sponge cake.
A tea-table filling rather than a lunch sandwich, and the proportions are left entirely to the cook. A few notes on quantities and handling.
- Working proportionsAbout 1/2 cup finely chopped candied fruit with 1 to 2 teaspoons orange juice fills six to eight small sandwiches. Add the juice a few drops at a time; candied fruit takes up very little before the mixture slumps and soaks the bread.
- GreengagesA green plum variety, once common in candied form and now hard to find outside specialist confectioners. Candied apricot is the nearest substitute; candied angelica will match the firmness and colour but is aromatic rather than tart.
- Candied fruit, not glacé cherryCandied fruit, not cocktail cherry -- The recipe assumes crystallised fruit, dense and only lightly sticky; candied and glace cherries of the period were much the same article. Modern bright red cocktail cherries are packed in syrup and will make the filling wet and cloying.
- ChoppingDust the knife or the fruit with a little confectioners' sugar; candied fruit gums up a blade quickly. A rough mince is better than a paste, which loses all texture against soft bread.
- The breadThin slices from a close-crumbed white loaf, buttered right to the edge so the juice cannot penetrate. Butter should be soft enough to spread without tearing, not melted.
- Sponge cake versionCut the sponge in thin slabs and treat it as bread. It needs no butter if the cake is rich, and it will not hold more than a very lightly moistened filling.
- Making aheadAssemble no more than an hour or two before serving, trim the crusts at the last minute, and keep the sandwiches under a damp cloth in the refrigerator. Cut into triangles or fingers for a tea tray.
Fancy sandwiches of this kind belong to the era of the formal afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon, when the sandwich course was expected to be decorative and sweet fillings sat beside savoury ones on the same tray. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, also published a cook book. Candied fruit made the recipe possible year-round in a period before reliable home freezing, since crystallising in sugar was one of several ways to keep cherries, pineapple and plums on hand out of season, and imported candied peel and glacé fruit were staple grocery items at Christmas. The instruction to use sponge cake as an alternative to bread suggests how loosely the word sandwich may have been applied at the time, covering almost anything spread and layered.