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Cocoanut Sandwich
One and one-half cup of grated cocoanut, onehalf cup of English walnuts chopped fine, one tablespoonful of rose water, three tablespoonfuls of sugar; mix well, moisten with three tablespoonfuls of thick cream. Spread mixture on thin slices of buttered white bread, cover with another slice and cut in strips.
A sweet tea sandwich from the era when the sandwich course closed a luncheon rather than fed a lunch. The filling comes together in a bowl in five minutes; the only real work is the bread.
- CocoanutLikely fresh coconut grated from the shell, moist and mildly sweet, though packaged desiccated coconut was also on sale by this period. Unsweetened frozen grated coconut, thawed, is the closest match to the fresh. Sweetened flake will make the filling cloying and should have the three tablespoons of sugar cut back or dropped.
- Rose waterA tablespoon is a lot by modern standards, and strength varies considerably from bottle to bottle. Start with a teaspoon, taste, and add more; overdone, it tastes of soap.
- Thick creamThis is heavy cream, unwhipped. Three tablespoons should bind the mixture into a spreadable paste, not a soup — add it by the spoonful, since the moisture in the coconut varies.
- English walnutsThe ordinary walnut of the supermarket, so named to distinguish it from the black walnut then common in American kitchens. Black walnut would overwhelm the rose water.
- Buttered breadThe butter is structural, not decorative: it seals the crumb against the cream so the sandwiches do not go soggy. Soften it thoroughly and spread it edge to edge.
- CuttingCut in strips means the sandwich divided into three or four fingers; the recipe does not specify trimming the crusts. A serrated knife and firm, day-old bread cut cleaner than fresh; chilling the assembled sandwiches for fifteen minutes under a damp towel helps more still.
- YieldEnough filling for six to eight sandwiches, or roughly two dozen fingers. Best made within a couple of hours of serving.
Rose water is the tell here. It was a standard flavoring in Anglo-American baking well into the nineteenth century, inherited from an older European tradition in which distilled flower waters did the work that vanilla extract later took over; by the time this book appeared it survived mostly in confectionery and in genteel sweet dishes like this one. Coconut had meanwhile become widely available to American households, and grated coconut appears constantly in turn-of-the-century cake and candy recipes. The sweet sandwich itself belongs to the afternoon tea and ladies' luncheon culture that made small crustless sandwiches a course of their own, cut into fingers so it could be eaten with one hand while holding a cup.