Lemon Sandwich
Slice a lemon very thin and remove the rind, sprinkle with powdered sugar and place between thin slices of lightly buttered white bread cut round. Garnish top with a candied cherry.
A tea-table sandwich that depends entirely on how thin the lemon is cut and how long the assembled sandwich stands. Both are worth attention.
- Slice thickness"Very thin" here means translucent — about 1/16 inch, easiest on a mandoline or with a very sharp thin-bladed knife. Anything thicker and the sandwich is simply sour, since you are eating raw lemon flesh and pith.
- Remove the rind after slicingThe instruction falls in that order in the text, and it is in any case easier to cut the peel away from a thin round than to peel the whole fruit first. Take the white pith with it, as that is where the bitterness sits.
- Powdered sugarPeriod usage is not fixed: 'powdered sugar' could mean finely ground granulated sugar as well as what we now call confectioners'. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch, which may help hold the juice the lemon gives up rather than letting it soak straight into the bread. Be generous.
- Butter as waterproofingButter on the bread will also act as a barrier; taking it out to the edges of each slice helps keep the lemon juice off the crumb. The recipe asks only for 'lightly buttered'.
- Assemble lateThey will not hold long; the rounds go limp once the juice works through. Cut bread and lemon ahead, sugar and close them just before serving.
- Cutting roundA 2 to 2.5 inch plain biscuit cutter, cut through the bread before filling. Trim the lemon rounds to just inside the bread so nothing shows at the edge.
- Candied cherryA glacé cherry. Halving it and setting it on a dab of butter or a little sugar paste will help it stay put; the recipe says only to garnish the top with one.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A lemon will realistically give perhaps eight to ten usable centre slices, and so a comparable number of sandwiches.
Sandwich books of the 1900s and 1910s ran to very large numbers of variations, the afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon favouring novelty and appearance — a sandwich was expected to be small, crustless, and often a distinct shape and colour from the one beside it on the tray. The sweet sections of such books are where the genre gets most inventive, and a lemon sandwich belongs to a family that includes fruit, jam, marmalade and nut fillings. Raw citrus with sugar between buttered bread is closer in spirit to a lemon-and-sugar pancake than to a modern sandwich: the sugar draws juice from the fruit and makes its own syrup on the plate. The candied cherry is a common garnish of the period.