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English Walnut Sandwich
Chop English walnuts fine, and over them pour the following dressing; five yolks of eggs well beaten, juice of two lemons, a good half-cup of water, one teaspoonful of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Let it cook until the eggs thicken. When cool, place between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread.
This is a lemon-yolk custard used as a binder for chopped walnuts — closer to a loose curd than a mayonnaise. The whole recipe hinges on cooking the yolks gently enough that they thicken without curdling.
- Use a double boilerFive yolks with lemon juice and only a half-cup of water will scramble over direct heat in seconds. Cook in a bowl set over simmering water, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the spoon — around 170F. It thickens further as it cools.
- "English walnuts"The ordinary Persian walnut sold everywhere today. The name distinguishes them from American black walnuts, which are far stronger and resinous and would overwhelm the lemon.
- "A good half-cup"A generous half-cup, so about 4 1/2 to 5 fl oz. The dressing is meant to be pourable over the nuts, not stiff; err on the fuller side if your lemons are small.
- Quantity of nuts is not givenThe original leaves it open. Roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of finely chopped walnuts will take up this amount of dressing to a spreadable paste; less and the filling runs out of the sandwich.
- Toast the nuts firstNot in the original, but 6-8 minutes at 350F sharpens the flavour and drives off the slight rawness that shows through a tart dressing.
- Butter the bread properlyThe thin film of butter is structural, not decorative — it keeps the acidic, moist filling from soaking into the crumb. Butter must be soft enough to spread without tearing thin slices.
- Yield and holdingEnough filling for about 12 to 16 small tea sandwiches. The dressing keeps two or three days covered in the refrigerator; assemble no more than an hour or two before serving and keep the sandwiches covered with a damp cloth.
The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book belongs to the brief American vogue, generally traced to the opening decades of the twentieth century, for the sandwich as a genteel item rather than a laborer's lunch — hence the arrangement by filling type, a Nut section among them, and the insistence on thin slices of white bread. Walnut sandwiches turn up constantly in this literature because chopped nuts gave a meatless filling body and richness at a time when afternoon tea and card-party menus wanted something substantial but not savoury. The dressing here is a cooked lemon-and-yolk sauce of a sort period books seem to have used variously as a salad dressing, a fruit-salad binder, and a sandwich spread; it is something close to a thin lemon curd, though without butter, and the technique — yolks, acid, sugar, water, cooked over water until it thickens — was standard well before mayonnaise became a household staple in jars.