Our third clue provided the cakes, or dainties, and these are very dainty indeed. Now you do not always have to have cake, because at many places afternoon tea can include sandwiches, though tradition and etiquette says that they really ought to have had the crusts cut off.
Now the really curious thing about this card is the title, for an iced bun to me, and hopefully to you as well, is a long bread roll with icing over the top from end to end, and sometimes it has jam or cream on it (or both). However the items on this card are definitely nothing like those, and nothing like a bun, if you ask me. I have had a quick look into the subject and the clue could be that some shops list what I call an iced bun as an iced finger bun. So somewhere along the line were there both sorts and these ones showing here were just lost in time.
If you are yelling, yes, I have used this card before, but just when it is an anniversary of a Branch or Club, or the birthday of a prominent cartophilist, or indeed cartophilistess. So it is pleasing that today I get to add it in, at last, as a card of the day, and to be able to discuss it, not just show it.
Now C.W.S. is actually a much needed abbreviation for the Co-Operative Wholesale Society, who were based in Manchester, England. However, as our original World Tobacco Issues Index tells us, they were pretty universally "Known as "C.W.S." and many cards [are] only identifiable through these initials, [sometimes suffixed by] "C.W.S. Tobacco Factory." And it also adds that "the firm also issued cards advertising non-tobacco products". In fact, they issued cards with non-tobacco products as well, being perhaps the only cigarette card issuer to do so. Unless anyone out there can think of another ?
I am rather surprised that this set was from the tobacco branch, for cookery in the home at that time was traditionally the job of the lady. However in that immediate post war period from 1923 - 1928 we have other tobacco sets on English Roses, and Wayside Flowers. So maybe the idea was to capture the attention of women, who in the early 1930s were just beginning to take advantage of their new found independence and smoke.
This set is described in our World Tobacco Issues Indexes as : "COOKING RECIPES (A) Sm. 63 x 38. Nd. (25)".
Sadly only the issuers with original reference books have longer and more detailed descriptions - and there never was a CW.S. reference book. However, there was planned to be, and it was also to cover the Scottish C.W.S., as well as Cavander[s], Drapkin, Duncan and Millhoff. This book is listed in the back of the Lambert & Butler Reference Book, RB.9, published in 1948, along a whole plethora of reference books that formed a "Suggested grouping to complete Part 1 of Programme - British Issuers", numbered 1-23". Most of these never made it to the printing stage.