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Nut Sandwich on Individual Tray
ALMOND SANDWICHES, No. 2-For another sandwich the almonds may be toasted light-brown and grated. Form into a paste with a little lemon juice, add a little salt, and spread over the bread. Again, the almonds may be chopped fine and mixed with twice the bulk of grated crisp celery. These are an excellent accompaniment to salads or cold meats. When served with the latter, the celery and almonds may be moistened with a few spoonfuls of mayonnaise.
Two variations on one idea, both worth making, and both dependent on how finely the almonds are reduced. The original assumes a rotary nut grater; a food processor will take the nuts to butter in seconds if you are not watching.
- Grating vs. grinding"Grated" here means a dry, fluffy powder from a hand nut mill, not a paste. In a processor, pulse in short bursts and stop while the almonds still look like coarse cornmeal — once the oil breaks free you have almond butter, which spreads but tastes flat in a sandwich.
- ToastingLight-brown means about 8-10 minutes at 350F on a sheet pan, shaken once, or the same time in a dry skillet over medium. Let them cool completely before grating; warm nuts release oil and clump.
- Blanched or notThis is No. 2, so an earlier almond sandwich precedes it in the book; what that one does about blanching is not visible on this page, and this recipe does not say. Skins left on give a browner, slightly bitter paste — perfectly good, but the colour is muddy against white bread.
- "A little lemon juice"Start with a teaspoon per half cup of ground almonds and add drop by drop. The paste should just hold together and spread; too much and it slumps and soaks the bread.
- The celery versionTwice the bulk of celery to almonds by volume, not weight — that is a great deal of celery. Cut the ribs into fine dice rather than grating them if you want any crunch to survive; grated celery sheds water and will need blotting.
- MayonnaiseBind sparingly, a tablespoon or two, and assemble close to serving. Commercial mayonnaise is made with pasteurised egg; homemade with raw yolk should not sit out at room temperature on a sandwich tray.
- Bread and assemblyPeriod sandwiches of this kind used thin-sliced white bread, buttered, crusts trimmed, cut into triangles or fingers. Butter is not optional with the celery filling — it is the moisture barrier.
- YieldHalf a cup of ground almonds fills roughly six to eight sandwiches cut small, enough for a tray of about two dozen fingers.
The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911 from the company better known for dress patterns, and its sandwich chapter belongs to the era when the sandwich was becoming a fixture of American ladies' luncheons, card parties and afternoon teas. Almonds were an expensive pantry nut, often bought in the shell and blanched and pounded at home, and the pairing with celery reflects a genuine fashion of the 1890s and 1900s, when celery was an expensive, carefully blanched table vegetable served in its own tall glass and worked into salads, soups and sandwich fillings for its crispness and faint bitterness. The instruction to serve these alongside salads or cold meats places them in the buffet and tray service of the period.