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Nasturtium Sandwich (Spread thin slices of lightly)
Spread thin slices of lightly buttered white bread with mayonnaise dressing; place nasturtium blossoms overlapping one another half way; roll up the sandwich and fasten with a toothpick.
A rolled tea sandwich that depends entirely on the freshness of the flowers and the pliability of the bread. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: bread that will rollThin slices from a soft, close-grained white loaf, crusts off, flattened with a rolling pin, will curl without cracking. Staler bread or an open crumb is much more likely to crack along the roll.
- Nasturtium blossomsTropaeolum majus, flowers and leaves both edible, with a peppery bite close to watercress. Use blooms grown without pesticide, shake them out for insects, and remove the green base of the flower, which can be bitter.
- "Mayonnaise dressing"In books of this period the term generally meant a made-from-scratch dressing, usually an emulsion of yolk and oil with vinegar or lemon and often mustard, thinner and sharper than jarred mayonnaise; some books used the phrase for a cooked dressing instead. Commercial mayonnaise loosened with a little lemon juice gets you close.
- Butter and mayonnaise bothThe butter is not redundant. A thin seal of softened butter keeps the dressing from soaking into the crumb, which is what makes a rolled sandwich collapse.
- Overlapping halfwayLay the blossoms across the slice so each overlaps the next by about half. (The line can also be read as covering only the half of the slice nearest you before rolling; either way the aim is flowers through the spiral rather than bunched at one end.)
- Holding themChill the finished rolls seam-side down under a damp cloth for half an hour; they set in shape and the toothpicks can come out before serving. Do not make them more than a few hours ahead, as the petals wilt and bleed colour.
- YieldOne standard slice gives one roll, or two shorter ones if cut after chilling. Figure two to three rolls per person at tea.
Nasturtiums arrived in European gardens from South America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were grown as much for the kitchen as for show: the seed pods were pickled as a caper substitute, the leaves went into salads, and the blossoms were treated as a garnish with real flavour rather than mere decoration. By the turn of the twentieth century the rolled and pinwheel sandwich had become a fixture of American ladies' luncheons and afternoon teas, where the point was visual novelty at small cost, and books of this kind ran to many variations.