Fruit Rolls
1 cupful milk 1 yeast cake 1/4 cupful lukewarm water 1/4 cupful sugar 1/4 cupful melted Crisco 2 teaspoonfuls salt 2 eggs 1/2 cupful chopped cocoanut 1/8 lb. chopped candied citron peel 1/2 cupful chopped English walnut meats 1/2 cupful currants 1/2 cupful sultana raisins 1/2 teaspoonful powdered cinnamon 1/2 teaspoonful powdered mace Flour Scald milk, when lukewarm add yeast cake dissolved in tepid water and 1 1/2 cupfuls flour, beat well, cover and let rise till light. Add sugar, salt, eggs well beaten, Crisco and enough flour to knead; knead, let rise again. Roll out one-eighth inch thick, spread with melted Crisco, sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and mace, fruit and nuts; roll like jelly roll and cut in one inch pieces. Place pieces in Criscoed pan, let rise, brush over with melted Crisco, and bake in hot oven twenty minutes.
Sufficient for sixteen rolls.
A sweet enriched dough rolled with dried fruit, nuts and spice — essentially a spiced cinnamon-roll dough from a Crisco promotional cookbook. The quantities are workable as written once you translate the yeast and the oven.
- Yeast cakeA yeast cake of this period is a small block of compressed fresh yeast; sizes varied, with the common grocery cake around 0.6 oz. One packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast dissolved in the quarter cup of warm water is a workable substitute.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'hot oven' in period usage corresponds roughly to 400-450F. Twenty minutes at that heat should suit one-inch slices; watch the fruit on the cut faces, since currants and sultanas can scorch before the dough is done.
- CriscoThe book was published to sell shortening, so Crisco appears at every step. Modern vegetable shortening behaves much the same; melted butter gives better flavour in the filling and in the wash, with no change to the method.
- Flour quantityOnly the first 1 1/2 cupfuls are specified; the rest is 'enough flour to knead,' judged by feel. Aim for a soft, slightly tacky dough — adding flour until it is not sticky at all will give dry rolls.
- Cocoanut'Cocoanut' here means dried shredded coconut, which was sold both sweetened and unsweetened; sweetened flaked coconut will make the filling sweeter and more prone to burning.
- Citron peelAn eighth of a pound is 2 oz, about a third of a cupful chopped. Candied citron is still sold at holiday time; mixed candied peel or candied orange is a fair stand-in.
- Scalding the milkScalding was the standard instruction for raw milk, said to deactivate a milk component that weakens dough. With pasteurised milk it is generally treated as optional — warm it to about 110F and proceed.
- Rolling thicknessAn eighth of an inch is very thin, so the rolled log carries many layers and a tight spiral. Roll to a long rectangle and keep the filling away from the far edge so the seam seals.
- YieldSixteen rolls, as stated. They are best the day they are baked; the fruit keeps them moist for a second day if wrapped.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the 1910s: the cookbook published by a manufacturer to teach cooks how to use a new product. Crisco, hydrogenated vegetable shortening, was introduced in 1911, and books like this one appeared to argue that it could replace butter and lard in every application — hence the shortening in the dough, in the filling, in the greasing of the pan and in the glaze. The rolls themselves are conventional enough: a rich yeasted dough spread, spiralled and sliced is an old northern European pattern, and the mixture of citron, currants, sultanas and mace is the standard festive spicing of nineteenth-century American baking, the same palette used for fruit cake and hot cross buns. The one modern touch is coconut, which had become cheap and widely available in dried shredded form by the turn of the century and turns up in American recipes of the period with a freedom that later generations abandoned.