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Maple Cream Sandwich
One-half pound of maple sugar, one-half pound of brown sugar, one-half cup of water, and one-half teaspoonful of cream of tartar; boil these together until they form a soft ball when dipped into cold water.
When nearly cold, beat with a fork until thick and creamy; spread on an equal number of thin round slices of buttered white and entire wheat bread, and place together in pairs, one of each kind of bread.
This is fudge-making by another name, and the whole recipe hinges on temperature: the syrup has to reach soft-ball stage and then cool substantially before it is beaten. A few notes make it reliable.
- Soft ball, in numbersSoft-ball stage is 234-240F (112-116C) on a candy thermometer. The cold-water test in the original works, but the thermometer removes the guesswork; aim for 238F for a spread firm enough to hold between bread slices.
- The hinge: let it cool before beatingBeating hot syrup gives a grainy, coarse cream. Let the pan stand undisturbed until the mixture drops to about 110F (lukewarm to the back of the hand), then beat. The undisturbed cooling is what keeps the sugar crystals small.
- Maple sugarHard maple sugar in cakes or blocks is still sold, mostly by producers in Vermont, Quebec and Ontario, but is not a supermarket staple. Granulated maple sugar works identically. Half a pound is about 1 1/4 cups packed.
- Cream of tartarUnchanged and still on the spice shelf. It inverts some of the sucrose during boiling, which is what stops the finished cream setting up hard and brittle.
- Entire wheat breadPeriod usage for whole-wheat bread; the term was sometimes used for a finer-milled grade than today's coarse whole grain. Any good whole-wheat sandwich loaf is right; the pairing of light and dark rounds presumably makes for visual contrast.
- Work fast once it thickensMaple cream stiffens quickly after beating. Have the bread cut, buttered and laid out first. If it sets too hard to spread, warm the bowl briefly over hot water.
- YieldA pound of sugar total makes something in the region of 1 1/2 cups of cream, enough for a couple of dozen small round sandwiches if cut with a 2-inch cutter. Assemble the same day; the bread stales fast.
Sandwich books proliferated in the United States between about 1900 and 1920, when afternoon tea, card parties and "luncheons" created steady demand for small, pretty, portable food, and this maple cream sandwich belongs to that world rather than to the lunchbox. The pairing of a white and a whole-wheat round in each sandwich recurs in the genre, apparently for the two-tone look on the plate. Maple sugar itself was a New England and eastern Canadian staple long before it became a specialty item, and in maple country it could be cheaper than refined cane sugar; cutting it here with brown sugar would keep the cost down, while the cream of tartar does the work of keeping the boiled fondant soft. What the recipe describes is essentially maple fondant, close kin to the confection sold in sugar-house shops today as maple cream or maple butter, pressed into service as a sandwich filling.