Fruit Cookies
1 teaspoonful salt 2 cupfuls brown sugar 1 cupful Crisco 1 cupful chopped raisins 1 cupful chopped English walnut meats 3 eggs 1 teaspoonful powdered cinnamon 1/2 teaspoonful powdered allspice 1 teaspoonful powdered ginger 1 1/2 teaspoonfuls baking soda 2 tablespoonfuls sour milk Flour Cream Crisco and sugar together, add salt, eggs well beaten, soda mixed with milk, spices, raisins, nuts, and enough flour to make stiff dough. About 5 cupfuls flour will be sufficient. Roll out, cut with cooky cutter, lay on Criscoed tins and bake in moderate oven from ten to twelve minutes. Sufficient for sixty cookies.
A rolled spice cookie of the hermit family, scaled for a household that baked five dozen at a time. Two things need attention: the flour is given as an estimate, and the dough is far easier to handle cold.
- CriscoStill sold, though reformulated over the years to remove trans fats. Any solid vegetable shortening works; a cup weighs about 6 1/2 oz. Butter gives better flavour but a softer, more spreading dough, so chill it longer if you swap.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk but naturally soured raw milk, mildly acidic. Substitute 2 tablespoons buttermilk, or 2 tablespoons whole milk with 1/4 teaspoon lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left five minutes.
- Flour is a range, not a measure"About 5 cupfuls" is the author hedging, and she is right to. Add it a cup at a time until the dough is stiff enough to roll without sticking. Household flour of the period was not standardised, so you may find you need slightly less than five cups.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; "moderate" is usually taken as somewhere around 350-375F. Ten to twelve minutes suits cookies rolled thin; they should be set at the edge and still pale in the centre.
- Chill before rollingThe recipe skips this, but a dough with a cup of shortening and two cups of brown sugar is slack at room temperature. An hour in the refrigerator makes it cut cleanly and keeps the shapes sharp.
- Chop the fruit and nuts fineLarge raisin pieces tear rolled dough and catch under the cutter. Chop both raisins and walnuts to roughly pea size, and toss them with a spoonful of the flour before adding.
- Criscoed tinsGrease the baking sheets, or simply use parchment. The dough is rich enough that sticking is rarely a problem.
- YieldThe recipe claims sixty cookies, though it does not say what size cutter. The dough keeps well wrapped in the refrigerator for several days, so it can be rolled in batches.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble as a promotional cookbook for Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening the company introduced in 1911 — which is why the fat is named as a brand in the ingredient list and why the tins are "Criscoed" rather than greased. The cookie itself is older than the shortening: a rolled brown-sugar dough with raisins, walnuts and a trio of warm spices belongs to the same nineteenth-century American family as the hermit and the rock cake, keeping cakes built to survive a week in a tin. The sour milk and soda are a holdover from an era when households had milk turning on the shelf and used its acid to activate the leavening, a habit that persisted in print long after commercial baking powder had made it unnecessary.