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Creamed Karo Sandwiches
Lightly butter white or entire wheat bread. Spread with Creamed Karo, dust with nuts and put together.
A two-line assembly recipe that assumes you have already made the filling and that you know what the manufacturer meant by its own product names. Both need translating.
- "Creamed Karo"Karo is corn syrup, and "creamed Karo" appears to mean corn syrup cooked and then beaten until it turns opaque and spreadable, fondant-style, rather than a separate product you buy. If the booklet gives creaming instructions elsewhere, use those, since the consistency is the whole point of the sandwich.
- If you have no creaming recipeA workable stand-in is a stiff paste of light corn syrup beaten with softened butter and enough confectioners' sugar to hold a shape. It should mound on the knife, not run, or the bread will go grey and soggy within the hour.
- "Entire wheat bread"Period term for whole-wheat bread, usually a fine-ground flour rather than the coarse graham style. Any modern sandwich loaf works; a close, tight crumb holds a sweet spread better than an open artisan one.
- The butter is structural"Lightly butter" is not just a flavour note. The fat film helps keep the syrup from soaking into the crumb, and the instruction sensibly comes first. Butter must be soft enough to spread without tearing the slice.
- Nuts"Dust with nuts" suggests finely chopped, near-crumb fine, so the halves press flat and cut cleanly. Walnuts, pecans or blanched almonds are plausible period choices; toasting them first is an option the book does not ask for.
- ServingThe recipe gives no serving directions. Treated as a tea sandwich, it can be trimmed of crusts and cut into fingers or triangles and served alongside other sweets. Assemble shortly before serving and keep covered with a damp cloth.
This comes from the era when corn syrup refiners published their own cookbooks to teach households what to do with the product. Karo, marketed from the early twentieth century by the Corn Products Refining Company, was promoted as a cheaper, non-crystallizing stand-in for sugar and molasses, and booklets like this one worked hard to place it in every course of the meal u2014 hence a sweet spread pushed into the sandwich section. Sweet tea sandwiches were entirely conventional at the time: ladies' luncheons and afternoon teas could feature bread spread with jam, honey, dates or nut pastes, cut into fingers and served with the savoury ones. What dates the recipe is not the idea but the assumption that a reader would recognize "Creamed Karo" on sight, the way a modern reader recognizes peanut butter.