Just too simple? - walnut sandwiches

"These sandwiches are very good with ices, instead of the usual biscuits or wafers." Elizabeth David

This is a lucky dip - from Elizabeth David's Summer Food, a book that is full of simple - and sometimes not so simple food for summer. I've used it a lot in the past, and there are lots of really wonderful things in there.

This was a lucky dip however, and the page that I randomly selected did not fill me with joy and the excitement of exploring something with maybe a few surprises along the way. No - I was in the Sweets section and on the page were Tarte aux abricots; Sweet pastry for open fruit pies; Apricot ice cream; Strawberries and cream; Iced strawberry fool and Walnut sandwiches. Hmm. In the right mood I might have gone for strawberries and cream although I had a niggling feeling that I had done that before; -or Tarte aux abricots - sort of ditto. Even the pastry but no - walnut sandwiches? Why on earth would you make walnut sandwiches, particularly when you read the actual recipe - if you can call it that - just three lines long?:

"Cream together 1 1/2 oz butter and 2 tablespoons of shelled chopped walnuts. Sandwich between very thin slices of lightly buttered brown bread. Remove the crusts."

Really? Why would you? Although these days I suppose it would be dressed up as health food with walnut butter in a jar from the supermarket. After all, not so different from a peanut butter sandwich I suppose. And then to serve it with ices?

So I went looking and found one lady on a website called Bon Appétempt who had actually taken Elizabeth at her word and made them in conjunction with the strawberry fool on the same page. That's her picture at the top of the page. Her verdict? The sandwiches "seemed to offer that same mix of equal parts indulgence and nourishment" having absorbed Elizabeth's advice that "There is nothing more delicious than fruit and cream.” Indeed she goes so far as to say: "if you find yourself with one more sun-filled Sunday, I couldn’t recommend making this more."

Nobody else seems to have given them a go however, but I couldn't leave it there, wondering whether they were something that everyone from some corner of British or European society knew about. But no. However I did find this mini video on YouTube from America called Walnut sandwich (1901) and a man who has a YouTube channel (I suppose that's what it is) called Sandwiches of History and on there he has this sandwich which is even more weird than Elizabeth's in that the bread comes out of a tin!

So herewith an aside about Boston Brown bread, which Yvonne Ruperti describes on the Serious Eats website as:

"a colonial New England classic made with cornmeal, rye or whole wheat flour, and enriched with molasses."

Not really what Elizabeth David was thinking about but still - because of the molasses it's a sweet bread and so, in a way might be ideal for her sandwiches. But how can it be in a tin? Well as Yvonne Ruperti goes on to say, and also to show you how to do it at home, in her recipe for Easy Boston brown bread:

"Boston brown bread, essentially a baking soda-leavened "quick bread," has an unusual cooking method: It's steamed. To cook, the batter is poured into greased cans (often a coffee can), covered with parchment or foil and secured with string, and then set in a pot with a few inches of water. The steamy heat gently cooks the batter into a cylindrical loaf with a wonderful texture that is sliceable but unbelievably moist. Because the batter lacks any real structure (no eggs, no gluten-producing flour), the can is there to hold it all together until the starches gelatinize and set."

And our man of Sandwiches of History shows us how to turn it into a walnut sandwich - which he quite liked - he gave it 6 out of 10, before he meddled with it a bit by toasting the bread and pouring over some hot honey to take the 6 to 9.

Am I tempted? I don't really think so. And neither is anyone else it seems. Walnut sandwiches however exist aplenty - mostly with cream cheese and celery and white bread. A kind of waldorf salad in a sandwich.

Although lots of people raved about a sandwich called the EB BB from a trendy bakery in New York City called Elbow Bread, described by that bakery thus:

"The EB BB is feuilletine-laced crispy walnut butter, Ben’s cream cheese, and pulled dates on our sourdough black bread."

What is feuilletine you may ask, as did I? Well apparently it's:

"thin, crispy flakes made from crushed, caramelized French wafer crêpes"

'Pulled dates'? How do you pull a date? Surely they just mean squashed or mashed. Anyway it's a very long - and typically modern - way away from Elizabeth David's incredibly simple, dare I say boring sounding? - sandwich from the 1950s. But then maybe simple might be brilliant - particularly if served with iced strawberry fool. And I have nothing but praise for Iced strawberry fool.

YEARS GONE BY

February 9

2025 - French toast

2024 - Nothing

2023 - In the middle of France is Berry

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Missing

2020 - Revisiting Robert Carrier's Great dishes of the World

2019 - Nothing

2018 - When and why did bowls become a thing?

2017 - Health food?