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Fig Sandwich No. 2
One-half pound of finely chopped figs, one-third cup of sugar, half-cup of boiling water, and two tablespoonfuls of lemon juice; mix these ingredients and cook in a double boiler until thick. When cool spread mixture on thin slices of buttered white bread, cover with another slice and cut in fancy shapes.
A straightforward fig paste cooked down and spread cold. The only real technique is the double boiler, and the only real risk is spreading it warm.
- The hingeThe filling must be fully cool before it touches the bread. Warm fig paste soaks straight through thin buttered slices and the sandwich cannot be cut cleanly.
- FigsAlmost certainly dried rather than fresh; the half-cup of boiling water points that way. Stem them first, and if they are hard, cover with hot water for ten minutes and drain before chopping — a food processor does the chopping in seconds.
- Double boiler timingExpect 20 to 30 minutes over simmering water for the mixture to thicken to a jam consistency that mounds on a spoon. A heavy saucepan over low heat works and is faster, but needs near-constant stirring as the sugar will catch.
- SugarOne-third cup is modest for half a pound of figs, which carry plenty of their own sweetness. Taste before adding more; the lemon juice is there to cut it, not to sweeten.
- The butter mattersButter seals the crumb against the moist filling rather than merely dressing it. The wording leaves it unclear whether the covering slice is buttered too, though buttering both helps. Use butter soft enough to spread without tearing thin bread.
- "Fancy shapes"Cut with the crusts removed, using a sharp thin-bladed knife or small cutters. Chill the assembled sandwiches briefly under a damp cloth first and the shapes hold better.
- YieldThe filling makes roughly a cup to a cup and a half, enough for something like 8 to 10 full sandwiches or about three dozen small tea-sized pieces.
Sandwich books proliferated in the United States between about 1900 and 1920, when the afternoon tea, the card party and the packed picnic basket all called for something small, sweet and portable. Fillings built from dried fruit — figs, dates, raisins — cooked with sugar and a little acid were staples of these collections, and it is easy to see the appeal: they kept for days in a covered jar and would not spoil in a lunch box the way meat or egg would. Figs in particular were cheap and widely available in dried form; California's fig acreage expanded sharply in this period, and dried figs were promoted heavily for baking and for their reputation as a digestive aid. The instruction to cut in fancy shapes places this squarely in the tea-table tradition rather than the lunch pail: the numbered title suggests the compiler had gathered several versions of the same idea, which may well reflect how such books were often assembled.