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Marron Sandwich
Cut the bread in rounds with a biscuit cutter; put a marron glace in the centre and around it whipped cream that has been sweetened and flavored. Nice for afternoon luncheon.
An open-faced tea sandwich rather than a closed one, and it lives or dies on assembly timing. Read it as a garnished canapé.
- Marron glacéA whole chestnut candied in sugar syrup and glazed, sold in jars or foil-wrapped in tins, usually in the holiday season or from Italian and French grocers. Whole marrons are expensive; the broken pieces or brisures sold for baking work here and cost far less.
- The breadUse a fine-crumbed white or brioche loaf, a day old so it cuts cleanly. The recipe names only a biscuit cutter; a 1.5 to 2 inch round suits a one-bite sandwich once it is piled with cream.
- Butter the rounds firstThe recipe omits it, but a thin film of softened butter on the bread helps keep the cream and the syrup from soaking into the base.
- Sweetened and flavoredRoughly a tablespoon of sugar to a cup of heavy cream. The recipe does not say which flavoring; vanilla, maraschino, kirsch or rum would all be plausible for the period. The chestnut is already very sweet, so keep the cream barely sugared.
- Whip it stiffPiped cream needs to hold a firm peak or it will slump off the bread. Whip to stiff peaks and pipe a ring around the chestnut with a star tube rather than spooning it on.
- Assemble at the last minuteThese will not stand. Cut and butter the rounds ahead, keep them covered with a damp cloth, and pipe the cream shortly before serving.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A sandwich loaf will give a couple of dozen rounds or so, and a cup of cream, whipped, should cover most of them; figure two or three per person at a tea.
Sandwich books multiplied in America between about 1900 and 1920, when the afternoon luncheon and the ladies' tea created demand for food that could be eaten standing up and looked ornamental on a tray -- which is why such volumes so often turn from savory fillings to what are really iced canapés. The marron glacé itself is a European confection, often said to come from the chestnut country of Piedmont and the Ardèche, with Lyon traditionally treated as its commercial home, though the origin is contested; whole chestnuts are candied slowly in successive baths of syrup, then glazed. In this period they reached American tables as an imported luxury in glass jars, and their appearance in a recipe was a small display of means. The instruction to cut bread with a biscuit cutter is characteristic of the genre: the same trick, with a different center and a differently flavored cream, made a new recipe.