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Currant Tartlets
1/3 cupful currants 3 tablespoonfuls ground rice 2 whites of eggs 4 tablespoonfuls Crisco 3/4 cupful sponge cake crumbs 4 tablespoonfuls sugar 2 tablespoonfuls chopped candied orange peel 1/2 teaspoonful lemon extract Pinch of salt Crisco pastry 1 tablespoonful cream Cream Crisco and sugar together, and ground rice, crumbs, peel, currants, cream, salt, lemon extract, and whites of eggs well beaten. Roll out paste, cut into rounds, line some Criscoed tartlet tins with rounds, put in each a tablespoonful of the mixture. Bake tartlets in moderate oven from twelve to fifteen minutes. Or, these tartlets may be covered with frosting, and a little chopped cocoanut sprinkled over tops.
Sufficient for nine tartlets.
A small-batch almond-less frangipane, thickened with rice flour and cake crumbs rather than ground nuts. It comes from a Crisco promotional cookbook, so shortening appears in both pastry and filling.
- Moderate ovenRead this as roughly 350-375°F. Start checking at twelve minutes, the bottom of the recipe's range; look for a filling that is set and lightly domed, and pastry edges that are pale gold.
- Ground riceRice ground to a meal, coarser than modern rice flour though finer than semolina. Ordinary white rice flour from a supermarket or Asian grocer substitutes; the coarser the grind, the more noticeably grainy the filling.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red currants. If yours are hard, cover with hot water for five minutes and drain well before mixing, or they will draw moisture from the filling.
- Crisco and "Criscoed"Any solid vegetable shortening substitutes directly, or use butter for better flavour in the filling. "Criscoed tartlet tins" simply means greased. "Crisco pastry" is the book's own shortcrust, made with shortening in place of lard or butter.
- Sponge cake crumbsStale plain sponge or pound cake, rubbed through your fingers or pulsed briefly. Dry crumbs absorb better than fresh; a day-old cake is ideal. Avoid anything iced or heavily flavoured.
- Order of mixingThe single run-on sentence hides the sequence. Cream shortening and sugar, work in rice flour, crumbs, peel, currants, cream, salt and extract, then fold in the stiffly beaten whites last so the filling stays light.
- Tartlet tinsShallow patty or mini-muffin cups of about 2 to 2 1/2 inches. A tablespoon of filling per shell is right; overfilled tartlets will crack and weep as the whites expand.
- Yield and servingNine tartlets, as stated, and they are one- or two-bite pastries. Cool completely in the tins before lifting; if frosting, use a thin water icing and the coconut goes on while it is still tacky.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening the company brought out in 1911, and the book's insistence on the brand name throughout its ingredient lists — even as a verb, "Criscoed" — is advertising rather than cookery. The tartlets themselves are older than the shortening. Fillings built from cake or biscuit crumbs bound with egg white, sweetened and scented with citrus, run through English baking well into the nineteenth century, where they cousin the Maids of Honour and the crumb-thickened "cheesecakes" that contain no cheese; ground rice served much the same thickening role that ground almonds did in richer versions, at a fraction of the cost. The currants are Zante currants, tiny dried grapes named for the Ionian island that shipped them.