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For Dressing (Tablespoonfuls melted Crisco)
6 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 1 teaspoonful salt 1/4 teaspoonful paprika Pinch black pepper 1 tablespoonful tarragon vinegar 2 tablespoonfuls cider vinegar 1 tablespoonful chopped cucumber pickles 1 tablespoonful chopped green peppers 1 teaspoonful chopped parsley 1 teaspoonful chopped chives 1 can asparagus or fresh cooked asparagus Drain asparagus and chill. Mix salt with paprika, add pepper, tarragon vinegar, cider vinegar, Crisco, pickles, peppers, parsley, and chives, mix well and pour over the asparagus.
A sauce ravigote in all but name, written to sell shortening. The one substitution below matters more than anything else on the list.
- Melted Crisco is the problemHydrogenated shortening is solid at room temperature and sets hard on chilled asparagus, leaving a waxy coating and a pale film on the plate. Use 6 tablespoons of olive or a neutral vegetable oil instead; the dressing was built this way only because the book is a Procter & Gamble advertisement.
- The ratioSix tablespoons fat to three of vinegar is a 2:1 vinaigrette, on the sharp side by modern taste but correct for asparagus. A teaspoon of salt for that volume is also assertive; start with half and adjust after the dressing has stood a few minutes.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, but easily improvised: steep a bruised sprig of fresh tarragon in white wine vinegar for a day or two. Failing that, use white wine vinegar with a pinch of chopped tarragon added to the herbs.
- Cucumber picklesMost likely small sour or sweet-sour gherkins rather than large dill spears; cornichons chopped fine give a close result. Squeeze them dry or the dressing thins.
- Green peppersAn unripe bell pepper, raw and finely diced. Not chile; the paprika is the only heat intended, and the paprika sold at the time would generally have been a mild one.
- Canned asparagusWidely used at the time, and it is soft and salty; the recipe lists it first. Fresh spears, boiled 3 to 5 minutes depending on thickness, then plunged into ice water and drained thoroughly, hold up far better under an acidic dressing.
- Assembly and yieldDress the spears no more than 15 minutes before serving or the acid dulls the green. The quantities given cover about 1 to 1 1/2 lb of asparagus, serving four to six as a salad course.
This comes from Marion Harris Neil's A Calendar of Dinners, one of several cookbooks Procter & Gamble commissioned after Crisco went on sale in 1911 to persuade cooks that hydrogenated cottonseed oil could replace lard and butter in every part of the meal, salad dressing included. The dressing itself is a plain vinaigrette dressed up as sauce ravigote, the French mixture of vinegar, oil and chopped herbs with capers or pickle; asparagus under a sharp herbed vinaigrette seems to have been a familiar cold course in the 1910s, and canned asparagus may well have loosened the dish from its spring season. That a shortening meant for pastry and frying is being melted into a cold salad dressing is the clearest sign of the book's purpose: the recipes exist to demonstrate the range of a single product.