Home › Sweet › Lady Finger Sandwich
Lady Finger Sandwich
Chop figs fine and rub to a smooth paste; add a dash of orange juice and spread on lady fingers; press two fingers together and garnish with a spray of smilax.
A tea-table sandwich in the loosest sense: two ladyfingers with a fig paste between them. The original gives no quantities, so the proportions below are a working starting point.
- Which figsDried figs are probably meant — Smyrna or Mission, both common grocery items of the period. Stem them first, and if they have gone hard, steep them in hot water or orange juice for ten minutes and drain before chopping.
- Rub to a smooth pasteThis is the hinge. Hand-chopped figs stay grainy and the seeds keep the filling from binding; the paste has to be worked until it is genuinely tacky or the two ladyfingers will slide apart. A food processor does in thirty seconds what the original expects of a knife and the back of a spoon.
- A dash of orange juiceRoughly a tablespoon to every 8 oz of figs. Add it a little at a time — too much and the paste turns to a wet jam that soaks the biscuit. A little grated zest sharpens it without loosening the mixture.
- LadyfingersItalian-style savoiardi, the crisp dry kind, hold up better than the soft sponge-cake sort. Spread the paste thinly; a heavy layer will soften the biscuit within an hour.
- Smilax is decoration, not foodFlorist's smilax (Asparagus asparagoides) was a common trailing green on tea tables and platters of the period. It is not eaten, and the berries of Asparagus species are generally regarded as toxic — treat it as a plate garnish only, or use a mint leaf or a strip of candied orange peel instead.
- Yield and timing8 oz of dried figs and a tablespoon of orange juice fills about a dozen pairs. Assemble no more than an hour or two ahead and keep them covered, or the biscuits go limp.
The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book belongs to a brief American publishing vogue, generally dated to the turn of the twentieth century though dedicated sandwich volumes appear as early as the 1890s, for volumes devoted entirely to sandwiches — a food that had moved from tavern fare to the centre of the ladies' luncheon, the card party and the afternoon tea. The "sweet" chapters in these books stretch the word sandwich well past bread: anything with a filling pressed between two like halves qualified, including cake, wafers and, here, ladyfingers. Dried figs were a natural filling for the purpose, being cheap, shelf-stable and already sweet; Smyrna figs dominated the American market until California plantings caught up in the early twentieth century. The spray of smilax at the end says as much about the period as the recipe does — presentation counted for a great deal.