Los Angeles herald., 1891-06-12
EsTHETIc SANDWICHES.

A Method of Flavoring Bread and But
ter That Makes Them Delicious.
To speak of an aesthetic sandwich
sounds almost as unexpected and para
doxical as to speak of an aesthetic sau-
sage; and yet in England the gentle
women serve at afternoon tea sand
witches SO ambrosial that they fully JUS
tify the paradox.
These dainty delights, so diaphanous
that they are almost ethereal, tasted
for the first time at Elmswood House, in
Devon.
Elmswood House enjoys the distinction
of having the best appointed 8 o'clock
tea table in all England, which is no mod
est distinction in a country where after
noon tea is such an indispensable adjunct
to everyday life.
The aesthetic sandwich was invented
by the ladies of Elmswood House as a
novelty to accompany the tea, and it
proved SO popular that it remained a
feature of their table all the ensuing
winter, and finally became a staple, ap-
pearing with the urn summer and winter,
year in, year out.
Such perfect beverage must needs
have perfect accompaniment; SO, to
meet this demand, the aesthetic sandwich
was invented, and, ever since, fashion
able England has been eating violets and
roses, cowslips and orange blossoms with
her daily bread. The petals of these
blossoms are not plucked and laid be-
tween the buttered slices; no such crude
methods could obtain at Elmswood
House. Yet their f1avors are present as
distinctly as if the petals themselves
were there, and for long time the man
ner of procuring this effect was kept Sc
cret by their patrician inventors, so that
the sandwiches added to their material
deiciousness the further zest of mystery.
But the secret finally waited abroad,
as such secrets subtly will, and at the
time of my Elmswood visit it had be-
come such an open one that l was freely
taken into the cold stone dairy, where
Miss Winnifred and little Gladys un-
yelled the mystery to me. On one of the
marble shelves little pat of butter,
wrapped in thinnest dairy cloth, rested
on bed of clover blossoms in the bot
tom of a china tureen, and Betty, the
maid, was lining the sides of the dish
with the same fragrant blossoms and
heaping them on top of the pat. When
the tureen would not hold another bios
som the lid was crushed down upon
them, and the vessel was carried to the
huge, cool, gothic cellar to await ''the
ornamental meal, as Mr.. Oiphant terms
the s o'clock cup.
Here the butter busted itself absorb
ing fragrance, like bee in the clover;
while beside it in a stone jar was the
golden crusted loaf of bread, also
wrapped in film of dairy cloth and
packed snugly in a nest of clover bios
SONS. Here it kept cool and moist while it
bode it's time When that time came it was
cut with keen blade into slices so thin
that they were lacy and diaphanous, and
had to be buttered on the loaf. They
came to the senses like the breath of
calves and the scent of new mown hay
at dew fall. With such an adjunct the
wonder ceases that hot afternoon tea in
summer can seem so delightful to the
English; for all through green June it is
drank with clover sandwiches one day,
or rose the next, violet the next, and
anon honey locust blended with orange
blossom and tasting like some exquisite
idealized honey.
Earlier in the season there have been
cherry blossom and apple blossom but
ters, and cowslip and nasturtium, the
two latter being the most pungent and
piquant of all, and as they are very ap-
petizing they are great favorites with
the gentlemen. No flowers are used
with these buffers except the edible
fiowers-clover, locust and orange bios
SONS, that the bees have taught us to
relish in honey; roses and violets, that
confectioners have taught us TO relish in
glaces; the cowslip, which Goldsmith
and the Howitts have taught us to relish
in the home made wine of old time fc
ton, and the nasturtium, which pun
gent and peppery in pickles, becomes
most unctuous in the aesthetic sandwich.
1t was one of the pretty conceits of the
Elmswood House tea table to have the
various chanois leather tea cozies en-
broidered with the different flowers used
as favorings, and on clover day to use
the one with the clover spray upon it; on
cowslip day the cowslip cozy; on locust
day the locust cozy, and so on through
the whole repertory of flowers. The
mystifed were often archly assured that
the fragrance in the sandwiches pro-
ceeded, by some fairy witchery, from
the flowers on the cozy.
This favoring of butter was an open
secret among the French peasants long
before it was discovered by the English
patrician, and has made the butter stalls
of the Paris markets picturesque for
centuries.-S. T. Sherman in Table Talk.
Mime. Bernhardt's Makeup.
Mme Bernhardt uses very little make
up on the stage, and never wears wig,