India Sandwich
One cup each preserved ginger and candied orange peel chopped fine; mix with one-half cup of thick cream and spread on white bread thinly buttered. Garnish with stick of candied orange peel.
A tea sandwich rather than a lunch one: two candied fruits bound with cream on thin buttered bread. The only real difficulty is keeping the filling from soaking the bread.
- Preserved gingerThis means stem ginger in heavy syrup, sold in jars or in the older glazed crocks — not crystallised ginger and certainly not fresh root. Drain it well and blot it before chopping, or the syrup will thin the cream and wet the bread.
- "Thick cream"In the period this indicated rich, unskimmed cream rather than any standardised grade; how it compares to modern heavy or double cream is not fixed. Whipping heavy cream to soft peaks before folding in the fruit gives a filling that holds its shape and does not weep.
- ProportionsA cup each of chopped fruit to half a cup of cream is a stiff, fruit-heavy paste. That suits the purpose, since a looser mixture will slide out from between the slices.
- Candied orange peelShop-bought mixed peel is often dry and bitter-edged. Whole candied peel, or peel you have candied yourself, chops better and tastes of orange rather than of sugar.
- The breadThin-sliced white bread, buttered right to the edges. The butter is a moisture barrier as much as a flavour, so do not skip it, and use it soft rather than melted.
- Cutting and holdingTrim the crusts after filling, not before, and cut into fingers or triangles. Assembled sandwiches keep an hour or two under a damp cloth in the refrigerator; beyond that the cream softens the crumb.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield; the quantities make roughly 2.5 cups of filling, enough for a dozen or more thin sandwiches depending on how thickly it is spread.
Eva Greene Fuller's collection belongs to the brief early-twentieth-century vogue for the sandwich as a formal course -- afternoon tea, card parties, receptions -- when hostesses wanted variety more than substance, and cookbooks obliged with dozens of near-identical fillings distinguished only by their fruit or nut. The name is not explained in the book; preserved ginger came to American kitchens chiefly through the China trade and carried a general aura of the East, and names of this kind were commonly attached to such fillings without further justification. Ginger in syrup was an imported delicacy, sold in its decorated ceramic pot.