Hello friends!   Welcome to the latest post on “What Posh People ate in the ’80s”. This recipe for Avocado and Crab Finger Sandwiches comes from the Vogue Entertaining Guide from Autumn 1986.  The article features a mother and daughter who love to entertain after a match or two on their private tennis court.  When I said posh I meant swish enough to have a house with its own tennis court!

I would LOVE to be invited to a spot of doubles followed by an elegant afternoon tea!  (Note to friends – can one of you please get rich so we can do this?  And can we also wear gorgeous tennis dresses like these?)

The whole thing reminded me very much of the John Betjeman poem called A Subaltern’s Love Song:

Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament – you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father’s euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

Rather than lime juice and gin, this article waxes lyrical about a boysenberry daiquiri served with the afternoon tea:

One of Helena’s specialties is the delicious boysenberry daiquiri which is smooth in texture, with a wonderful colour and just enough zing in it to revive tired tennis bodies

And even includes a large picture of said daiquiris:

But, back in 1986, if you had a tired tennis body and needed the reviving properties of a boysenberry daiquiri, you would have been SOL as the Vogue Entertaining Guide did not give you the recipe for it!  It’s the opposite of Chekhov’s Gun.  Even today, with full use of the internet, the closest thing I could find is this recipe for a berry daiquiri from the BBC.  Never let it be said that I don’t give you something to soothe your tired tennis body! I mean it’s not boysenberries but what can you do?  Maybe boysenberry daiquiris only exist in the realms of people who have their own tennis courts and would never dream of publishing their recipe on something as mucky as the internet!

The Recipe – Avocado and Crab Finger Sandwiches

The article made no mention of who Margie is/was so neither shall we.  These were very yummy and delicate sandwiches.  And whilst I don’t want to drag Agatha Christie into every post, they were certainly something I could imagine people eating after a hit of tennis in one of her novels.  Whilst someone was being stabbed in the drawing room.

I added a sprinkle of chives from the garden and some chive flowers as a garnish for my sandwiches.

The Saratoga Torte which I featured a while back is from this same article.

I am now going to go dream of a life that includes

The traditional charm of a tennis afternoon tea expressed through the use of gleaming family silver and old lace

Have a wonderful week!