Wich No. 2
Chop fine a cupful of English walnut meats; moisten with a little thick cream and place between a slice of brown bread and one of white lightly buttered. Cut in rounds with a biscuit cutter.
A tea sandwich, not a lunch sandwich: the round cutter and the two-tone bread are the whole point of it.
- "English walnut"This is the ordinary walnut sold today (Juglans regia), specified to distinguish it from the native American black walnut, which is far stronger and oilier. A cupful of shelled meats is about 4 oz, enough filling for several small sandwiches depending on the size of your slices and cutter.
- Thick creamHeavy or whipping cream. Add it a teaspoon at a time until the chopped nuts just hold together as a paste; too much and the filling weeps into the bread within minutes.
- Brown breadIn an American sandwich book of this period brown bread usually means a fine-grained wholewheat or graham sandwich loaf rather than the steamed Boston brown bread, though a firm steamed loaf sliced thin also works. Whichever you use, it needs to be close-crumbed enough to cut cleanly.
- Season itThe original gives nothing but nuts and cream. A pinch of salt, and a few drops of lemon juice, keeps the filling from tasting flat; toasting the walnuts briefly first and cooling them before chopping adds more than any seasoning will.
- Cutting roundsAssemble the whole sandwich first, then cut through both slices at once with a 2-inch cutter so the brown and white layers stay aligned. Expect to lose a large share of the bread as trim, which is normal for the form.
- Holding and servingButter both slices lightly to the very edge; the butter is a moisture barrier as much as a flavouring. Cover with a damp cloth and refrigerate no more than an hour or two before serving, as chopped walnuts darken cream on standing.
Sandwich books were a small publishing genre in the first decades of the twentieth century, when the sandwich moved from a workman's meal to a fixture of afternoon tea, card parties and receptions. Their recipes tend to be very short because the interest lies in the variation rather than the technique: a filling, a bread, a shape. The brown-and-white pairing here, cut into rounds, belongs squarely to that decorative tradition, where a plate was expected to show several colours and shapes. Walnut sandwiches were a standard entry in such collections, sometimes bound with cream as here, sometimes with mayonnaise or cream cheese; the insistence on the English walnut reflects a market in which the native black walnut was still commonly gathered and sold, and was understood to be too assertive for delicate work.