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Whipped Cream Sandwich
One cup of thick cream, one tablespoonful of powdered sugar. Beat until solid, then add three drops of vanilla, let it become chilled, then spread on lady fingers, press together and serve as soon as made.
A two-ingredient filling that lives or dies on the cream and on how fast it gets to the table. Everything here happens in about ten minutes.
- "Thick cream" means heavy cream"Thick cream" means a cream rich enough to whip -- richer, probably, than the standard bottled cream of today. Use heavy or whipping cream at 36 percent butterfat minimum; anything labelled light, half-and-half or coffee cream will not hold a peak.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term often meant granulated sugar ground fine rather than exactly the modern confectioners' sugar, though confectioners' sugar works here. The modern product carries a little cornstarch, harmless in this quantity. One tablespoon to a cup of cream is a restrained sweetness by current standards.
- "Beat until solid"Stiff peaks, not past them. Cream taken beyond that point breaks into butter grains and weeping liquid, and there is no recovering it for a sandwich filling. Stop when the whisk leaves a track that stays.
- Chill first, not afterThe instruction to "let it become chilled" after whipping is backwards from modern practice. Chill the cream, the bowl and the beater before you start; cold cream whips faster, higher and more stably. A brief rest in the refrigerator after whipping does no harm.
- Three drops of vanillaExtracts of the period varied in strength and quality. Three drops is a very small amount, an eighth of a teaspoon or less; add to taste.
- Lady fingersThe crisp, dry sort (Italian savoiardi are the easiest to find) hold up better than the soft sponge fingers sold in some bakeries, though either may be what the book had in mind. They soften quickly against wet cream, which suits the instruction to serve at once.
- Serve as soon as madeUnstabilised whipped cream will begin to weep after a few hours and the biscuits soften into paste. Assemble as close to serving as possible rather than storing them made up.
- YieldA cup of cream whips to roughly two cups and will fill about a dozen sandwiches, depending on how generously you spread. Figure two or three per person alongside tea.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first two decades of the twentieth century, riding the popularity of the afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon, where a plate of small filled things was expected and a hot dish was not. The "sweet" chapters in these collections stretch the word sandwich well past bread: anything spread between two flat surfaces qualified, and lady fingers, macaroons and thin slices of sponge cake all served as the outer layers. Lady fingers are a piped sponge biscuit, which is why they appear here as a structural element rather than as the point of the dish.