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Fig and Apple Cobbler
Nearly fill Criscoed baking dish with equal amounts of sliced apples and chopped figs, arranging them in layers; add 1 cup water, strained juice 1 lemon and cover with Crisco biscuit dough about 1 inch thick. Place on range, cover tightly with a pan and simmer 30 minutes. Lift cover carefully, make an opening in middle of crust, and pour in another 1/2 cup water, 2 tablespoons Crisco, and 1 cup scraped maple sugar. Sprinkle a little maple sugar over top of pudding before serving it.
A stovetop cobbler: the fruit stews in a covered pan while the biscuit crust steams above it, so there is no oven involved and no browning. A few notes before you start.
- The hinge: low heat and a tight lidThe whole dish depends on trapping steam. Use a heavy pan or Dutch oven with a well-fitting lid over the lowest steady flame; if the fruit catches, the sugar syrup scorches and the crust never sets. A heat diffuser is worth using on a gas ring.
- "Criscoed" and CriscoCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, launched in 1911 and heavily promoted through books like this one. "Criscoed baking dish" simply means greased. Any solid shortening, or butter, works in the dough and for greasing.
- Crisco biscuit doughThis is a baking-powder biscuit dough; a conventional set of proportions is about 2 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 cup shortening cut in and roughly 3/4 cup milk, though the book's own figures are not given here. Roll it to the stated inch, which is thick, and expect the underside to be dumpling-like rather than crisp.
- The figsDried figs are almost certainly what is meant here rather than fresh, though the recipe says only 'chopped figs'. If using dried, snip off the hard stem ends before chopping; they will take up a good deal of the water in the pan.
- Scraped maple sugarMaple sugar was sold in hard cakes and scraped or grated to measure, so "1 cup scraped" is loosely packed, around 5 to 6 ounces. Granulated maple sugar is sold today; failing that, an equal weight of light brown sugar with a spoonful of maple syrup is close in effect, though not in flavour.
- Adding the second liquidCutting an opening in the crust part-way through lets the sugar, water and fat run down into the fruit rather than sitting on top. Do it quickly and replace the lid; you are trying not to lose the steam.
- Doneness and finishingAfter 30 minutes test the crust with a skewer at its thickest point; it should come out clean and dry. If you want colour, the pan can go under a hot broiler for two or three minutes once the fruit is cooked.
- YieldThe recipe gives no dish size or number of servings; a family-sized baking dish will feed roughly half a dozen. Best eaten warm the day it is made, with cream.
This comes from one of the recipe books Procter & Gamble commissioned to teach American cooks what to do with Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening it introduced in 1911; the name appears in nearly every line, which is the point of the book as much as the food. The cobbler itself is older than the marketing: a fruit base with a biscuit crust dropped or laid over the top, cooked in whatever the household had. Cooking it "on the range" under a tight lid rather than in the oven is the older method, generally traced to hearth and Dutch-oven practice, and it survived into the gas-range era for cooks who did not want to heat a whole oven for a pudding. The pairing of dried figs with apples reflects the period's pantry: figs shipped dried and kept indefinitely, while apples were the winter fruit anyone could get. Maple sugar, still sold in hard cakes to be scraped as needed, dates the recipe as firmly as the Crisco does.