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Brown Bread Souffle
Melt 2 1/2 tablespoons Crisco, add 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup cream, 2 cups brown breadcrumbs, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and grated rind 1 lemon; let boil 2 minutes, stirring well, remove pan from fire, add 4 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and when cool, beaten yolks 4 eggs. Beat egg whites stiffly and add them lightly. Pour mixture into Criscoed tin, cover with Criscoed paper and steam gently 1 hour. Serve hot with sweet sauce. Cabbage, a la Creme Trim and wash 1 cabbage, then boil in boiling salted water, adding 1 peeled onion stuck with 2 cloves. When tender take out onion and drain cabbage. Either chop finely or rub through a sieve. Melt 1 tablespoon Crisco in pan, put in cabbage, stir it well, add 3 tablespoons cream gradually, salt and pepper to taste.
When thoroughly hot, pile in hot dish, and garnish with sippets fried bread or toast.
Two dishes run together here: a steamed bread souffle (really closer to a steamed pudding) and a creamed cabbage. Both come from a Crisco promotional book, so shortening appears where an ordinary cook would have used butter.
- CriscoSubstitute unsalted butter measure for measure; 2 1/2 tablespoons for the souffle, 1 tablespoon for the cabbage. Butter improves the flavor of both, and nothing in either dish depends on shortening's higher melting point.
- Brown breadcrumbsNot the molasses-and-cornmeal Boston brown bread. The term most likely means crumbs from a plain wholemeal or brown wheat loaf, though in British books of the period it can also mean crumbs dried and browned in the oven. Either way use dry, fine crumbs; fresh soft crumbs will absorb the liquid unevenly and make the pudding heavy.
- The hinge: cool before the yolksThe instruction "when cool, add beaten yolks" is the one step that cannot be rushed. Stirring yolks into a hot panada scrambles them and you lose the lift. Let the mixture drop to lukewarm, beat in the yolks, then fold the whites in with a spatula in two or three additions.
- Tin, paper, and steamerA "tin" here is a mold of about 1 1/2 quarts; a buttered charlotte mold, pudding basin, or straight-sided souffle dish works. "Criscoed paper" is buttered parchment, tied over the top so condensation does not fall onto the surface. Set the mold on a rack in a pot with an inch or two of simmering water, cover, and keep the water at a bare simmer for the full hour, topping up with boiling water as needed.
- DonenessAfter an hour a skewer to the center should come out clean and the pudding should be just set and springy. It will not rise like a baked souffle and it will sink somewhat when unmolded, which is normal for the style.
- Sweet sauceThe period default is a thin vanilla or lemon custard sauce, or a hard sauce of creamed butter and powdered sugar softening over the hot pudding. Either suits the cinnamon and lemon rind.
- Cabbage cooking time"boil until tender" in books of this period often meant twenty minutes or more, which is why old creamed cabbage has a sulfurous reputation. Cut the cabbage in wedges and boil 8 to 12 minutes, until a knife meets slight resistance, then drain very well; wet cabbage will thin the cream.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter or toasted, set point-up around the edge of the dish. Cut them from firm white bread and add them at the last moment so they stay crisp.
- YieldRoughly 6 dessert servings from the souffle; the cabbage will serve about 4 as a side dish.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening introduced in 1911, which explains why a sweet steamed pudding and a dish of creamed cabbage both call for it in place of butter or lard. The souffle itself belongs to a much older European tradition of thrift puddings built on stale bread: crumbs are scalded with milk and cream into a soft panada, sweetened and perfumed with lemon and cinnamon, then lightened with beaten whites and steamed rather than baked. Steaming was the sensible method in a coal-range kitchen where oven heat was hard to hold steady, and it produces a moister, more forgiving result than a true baked souffle. The cabbage, pressed through a sieve and enriched with cream, shows the same period habit of smoothing a plain vegetable into something considered fit for the table with a garnish of fried bread.