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Jelly and Nut Sandwich
Chop English walnuts fine and stir into whipped cream; spread currant jelly on thin slices of lightly buttered white bread; on top of that spread the walnuts and cream, cover that with currant jelly, and lastly cover with another slice of bread. Serve as soon as made.
A four-layer sandwich built on whipped cream, which means it collapses quickly. The instruction to serve as soon as made is the whole method, not a courtesy.
- Assemble at the last momentUnsweetened whipped cream will begin to weep against jelly and bread before long. Whip the cream stiff, fold in the nuts, and build the sandwiches immediately before they go to the table.
- English walnutsSimply the common walnut, named to distinguish it from the American black walnut, which is stronger and more resinous. Either works, but black walnut will dominate the currant.
- Butter is structuralThe recipe calls for the bread to be lightly buttered, which puts a moisture barrier between jelly and crumb. Skipping it gives you a soggy sandwich.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly is sharp and firm-set, which is why it stands up to sweet cream. A modern grape or strawberry jam is softer and much sweeter; if you substitute, use a tart preserve and less of it.
- BreadThin slices of a close-crumbed white sandwich loaf. Trimming the crusts and cutting into fingers or triangles is a suggestion, not in the original. A loose artisan crumb tears under the jelly.
- Cream quantityThe original gives no amounts. Half a cup of cream, whipped, and a third of a cup of finely chopped walnuts will fill roughly six to eight tea sandwiches.
- SweeteningThe cream is left unsweetened, and it should be — the two layers of jelly carry all the sugar the sandwich needs.
Sweet sandwiches of this kind belong to the afternoon tea and card-party table of the early 1900s, when the sandwich in America was expanding well past cold meat and into nuts, fruit pastes, cheese and whipped cream. Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) collected several hundred such fillings, and its sweet chapter reads as a catalogue of what a hostess could assemble without cooking: jellies, marmalades, chopped dates, ginger, maraschino cherries. Currant jelly was the standard American jelly of the period, made in quantity at home each summer and reliable in its set, and walnuts were the everyday dessert nut. The demand that it be served at once marks the recipe as party food rather than lunchbox food.