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Red Raspberry Sandwich
Mix berries with thick cream and a little powdered sugar and place between thinly cut slices of buttered white bread. Garnish top with a berry.
A two-line summer sandwich that depends entirely on the state of the fruit and the thickness of the cream. There is nothing to cook, so everything rests on assembly and timing.
- Thick creamIn period usage this meant the heavy cream that rose on unhomogenised milk, thick enough to mound on a spoon. Modern heavy or double cream, whipped to soft peaks, is the nearest equivalent; pouring cream will soak the bread through within minutes.
- Crush or leave wholeThe recipe does not say. Lightly crushing about a third of the berries with the sugar and folding the rest in whole gives colour and juice without turning the filling to liquid.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term could mean either finely ground granulated sugar or what is now sold as confectioners' sugar; the latter dissolves instantly in cold cream and will not grit. Perhaps a teaspoon per half cup of berries, adjusted to the fruit.
- Butter both slicesThe butter is not seasoning here, it is a moisture barrier. Spread it soft and right to the edges, or the bread will go grey and wet where the juice lands.
- Bread'thinly cut' suggests a close-crumbed loaf; about a quarter inch, with the crusts trimmed if you like, works well. A day-old loaf slices thinner and cleaner than a fresh one.
- Assemble at the last momentThese will not hold. Build them no more than fifteen or twenty minutes before serving and keep them covered with a damp cloth in the refrigerator until then.
- Yield and servingAs a rough guide, a cup of berries with about a half cup of cream will fill some six small sandwiches, cut into halves or triangles. Served as a tea or dessert sandwich, not a lunch one.
Sandwich books proliferated in America between about 1900 and 1920, when afternoon tea, card parties and church suppers created steady demand for small, tidy, hand-held food, and the sweet sandwich sat comfortably alongside the savoury in those collections. A filling of berries, cream and sugar between buttered bread is essentially strawberries-and-cream logic transferred to a loaf, and it belongs to a moment when raspberries were a brief local crop rather than a year-round import. The butter-as-barrier trick appears elsewhere in this genre of cookbook and is the one piece of real technique in the entry.