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Tutti-Frutti Sandwich
Chop candied cherries, peaches, and apricots, add a little sherry wine and mix to a paste. Spread on thin slices of lightly buttered white bread, cover with another slice and cut in strips.
A candied-fruit paste bound with sherry, meant for a tea tray rather than a lunch box. The only real technique is getting the fruit fine enough to spread without tearing the bread.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none. Roughly 1/2 cup total candied fruit and 2 to 3 teaspoons sherry will fill four to five sandwiches, cut into about sixteen strips.
- Chop it finer than you thinkWhole candied fruit is stiff and will drag holes in thin bread. Chop to a coarse mince, then work it with the flat of a knife or pulse briefly in a food processor until it holds together as a paste.
- Candied peaches and apricotsBoth were ordinary confectioner's stock in the period and are now specialty items. Candied pineapple, glacé apricot from a baking aisle, or good crystallised ginger and mixed peel stand in; the dyed "fruitcake mix" is a poorer substitute, often padded with cheaper vegetable matter and syrup.
- The sherryA dry or medium amontillado suits the sweetness better than cream sherry. Add it a teaspoon at a time — too much and the paste weeps into the bread. The alcohol is not cooked off, which is worth knowing if children are at the table.
- Bread and butterThin means thin: a firm white sandwich loaf, around 1/4 inch, and crusts can be trimmed after assembly. The butter is light rather than rich, and spreading it edge to edge helps keep the wet fruit off the crumb.
- HoldingThese improve after 20 to 30 minutes wrapped in a damp cloth in the refrigerator, which lets the paste settle and makes clean cutting easier. Cut into strips just before serving.
Tutti-frutti — Italian for "all fruits" — entered American food English in the nineteenth century as a name for anything studded with mixed candied or preserved fruit, from ice cream to the crocks of fruit-and-brandy that households kept going all summer. By the time this sandwich book appeared, the sweet sandwich was a fixture of the afternoon tea, the card party and the church social: bread was the vehicle, and the point was to make something dainty from pantry staples that kept indefinitely. Candied fruit and a bottle of sherry were exactly that, which is why so many sweet sandwiches of the period read as confectionery pressed between slices rather than as food in any filling sense.