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Date and Fig Sandwich
To two cups of dates with stones removed, add one cup of washed figs, also one cup of seeded raisins; chop very fine and add enough water to make a paste to spread easily. Let this boil one minute, and when cool spread between thin slices of buttered white bread, cover with another slice and garnish top with a sugared date.
A dried-fruit paste sandwich from the era when tea sandwiches were expected to travel well. The whole thing depends on getting the paste soft enough to spread without tearing thin bread.
- Consistency is the hingeChop the fruit to a near-mash before adding water, then add the water a tablespoon at a time. Too dry and it will drag the crumb off thin bread; too wet and it soaks through. Aim for the stiffness of thick jam.
- "Washed figs"Dried figs of the period were often sold pressed in blocks and could arrive dusty, which is the likely reason for the instruction to rinse. Modern packaged dried figs need no washing, but do cut off the hard stem nub from each one.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" means the seeds have been removed, not that seeds were added. Ordinary seedless raisins are the direct substitute.
- The one-minute boilA brief boil swells the fruit and binds the paste rather than cooking it. Stir constantly, since a fruit paste this thick scorches quickly, and hold it at the boil for the full minute the recipe calls for.
- A food processor does this in secondsPulse the three fruits together rather than chopping by hand; scrape down the bowl often, as dates clump against the sides. Warm the fruit slightly first if it is very firm.
- Bread and butterButter the bread rather than the filling, and butter right to the edges. Softened, not melted, butter is what keeps the fruit from wetting the crumb, and a day-old close-grained loaf slices thinner than fresh.
- The sugared date garnishRoll a pitted date in granulated sugar and set it on top, or press it into the sandwich with a toothpick if it will be moved. Skip it if the sandwiches are to be stacked.
- YieldFour cups of fruit plus water makes a generous quantity of paste, enough for a dozen or more full sandwiches, or several dozen if cut into fingers or triangles with the crusts removed. It keeps covered in the refrigerator for about a week.
Sweet sandwiches filled with a cooked dried-fruit paste belong to the American tea-and-luncheon sandwich boom of roughly 1900 to 1930, when a wave of small books like this one catalogued fillings by the hundred for hostesses, church suppers and lunch boxes. Cheap, plentiful dried fruit helped: California date cultivation was getting under way in the Coachella Valley in these years, and dried figs and raisins were widely available, making a sweet, shelf-stable filling that needed no refrigeration and no egg. The same paste, thinned or thickened, turns up in the period as a cookie filling and as a base for date bread. The garnish of a single sugared date on top is characteristic of the genre, where a sandwich was expected to look composed on a plate rather than merely to be eaten out of hand.