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Rose-Leaf Sandwich
Flavor fresh unsalted butter with rose by packing in closed jar with a layer of rose leaves and leaving several hours. Any fragrant rose will answer. Cut white bread into dainty strips or circles, spread with the perfumed butter, put one or two rose leaves between the slices, allowing the edges to show.
A scent sandwich rather than a flavor one: the butter picks up rose perfume by proximity, and the petals in the middle are mostly there to be seen at the edges.
- "Rose leaves" means petalsIn cookbooks of this period rose leaves are the petals of the flower, not the foliage. Use petals only; the true leaves are tough and bitter.
- Source of the rosesFlorist roses are routinely treated with pesticides and systemic chemicals not approved for food. Use garden roses you know to be unsprayed, or petals sold specifically as edible.
- Which roseThe book is right that any fragrant rose will do, but scent varies enormously. Old damask, gallica and rugosa types carry the most perfume; many modern hybrid teas have almost none and will leave the butter blank.
- Prepare the petalsRinse and dry the petals thoroughly, and snip off the pale heel at the base of each one, which is the bitter part.
- Infusing the butterUse unsalted butter at cool room temperature, not chilled, so it takes up aroma. Layer petals and butter in a sealed jar and leave several hours or overnight in a cool place; refrigerate if the room is warm, then soften again before spreading.
- The breadA close-grained white sandwich loaf, thinly sliced and crusts removed, cut into strips or with a small round cutter. Cut the shapes before spreading so the butter stays neat at the edges.
- Assembly and holdingThese dry out quickly. Cover with a barely damp cloth and refrigerate under wrap, and lay in the petals no more than an hour before serving so they stay unwilted and the edges show clearly.
- YieldNo quantity is given. A quarter pound of butter and a small loaf will make roughly three to four dozen tea-sized sandwiches.
Flower sandwiches belong to the era of the elaborate afternoon tea, when the tea table was judged as much on prettiness as on substance. The technique here is older than the sandwich: perfuming butter, sugar or cream by sealing it in a closed vessel with rose petals or orange flowers is a standard trick in English and American receipt books going back well into the eighteenth century, resting on the fact that fat readily absorbs volatile aromatics. Rose water served the same purpose in the baking of the period. The rose-leaf sandwich, with the petal edges deliberately left showing, is as much a decoration as a thing to eat.