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Apple Sandwich No. 2
On thin slices of lightly buttered white bread spread baked apple. Dust with powdered sugar. Cover with another slice of bread and cut in strips.
A three-line filling recipe that assumes you already have baked apples cooling in the pantry. The whole thing hinges on the apple being dry enough not to soak the bread.
- The baked appleThe book gives no method: bake whole cored apples in a moderate oven until collapsing (allow around 45 minutes, depending on size), then scoop the flesh from the skins and let it cool completely. Warm apple will melt the butter and soften the bread.
- Drain itBaked apple releases a surprising amount of juice. Mash the pulp, then let it sit in a sieve for ten minutes or cook it down briefly in a pan until it mounds on the spoon.
- Choose a firm varietyChoose a tart cooking apple -- Bramley, Granny Smith or similar gives enough acid to keep the filling from tasting flat. Sweeter dessert varieties tend to give a looser, blander pulp.
- Powdered sugarIn period usage a finely milled sugar; modern confectioners' sugar is the nearest substitute. A tablespoon or so per two sandwiches is plenty when the apple is already sweetened; taste the pulp first.
- Lightly butteredThe butter is a moisture barrier, not a flavour, so it should be soft enough to spread in a thin film right to the crust edges. Do this before the filling goes anywhere near the bread.
- White bread, thinThe book specifies only thin slices of white bread; a close-crumbed sandwich loaf cut thin works best. Cutting in strips gives several narrow fingers from each sandwich.
- Yield and timingReckon one large baked apple to three or four sandwiches. Assemble within an hour of serving; these do not hold overnight.
This comes from an early twentieth-century collection of sandwich formulas, from a period when the sandwich was being adopted at American tea tables as well as lunch counters. Sweet sandwich sections in such books served afternoon tea and card parties, where something small and eaten with the fingers was wanted. The book gives no instruction for the apple itself, so a cook would have needed baked apple already to hand.