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Impanada
Cut up raw chicken, and flour each piece well. Line deep dish with slices raw sweet potato, slices raw white potato, some of chicken, little onion, few slices of bacon, salt and pepper to taste, and 1 can of tomatoes chopped fine, 2 tablespoons Crisco, and 1 tablespoon vinegar. Cover top of dish with sweet and white potatoes. Bake very slowly from 2 to 3 hours. Serve hot. This takes 3 medium-sized sweet potatoes and 6 medium-sized white potatoes.
A layered slow-baked chicken and potato dish from one of the Crisco promotional cookbooks; nothing about it is difficult, but the original assumes a coal range and gives no oven temperature or dish size.
- "Very slowly"The book gives no figure; a very slow oven in period usage is generally reckoned somewhere around 250-300F. At that heat the two to three hours is right: the flour-dusted chicken and the raw potatoes cook in the tomato liquid rather than frying, and bone-in pieces come away from the bone.
- Cover the dishThis is the hinge. There is no added water, and the only moisture is one can of tomatoes plus a tablespoon of vinegar. Use a lidded casserole or seal it tightly with foil for the first two hours, then uncover for the last 20-30 minutes to brown the top layer of potatoes.
- CriscoIntroduced in 1911 and the reason this book exists. Any solid vegetable shortening works as written; butter or oil will give a rounder flavor and behaves the same way here. Two tablespoons for a dish this size is modest — dot it over the layers rather than pouring it in one place.
- "Cut up raw chicken"A whole bird jointed into eight or ten pieces, skin on, bones in. One 3 1/2 to 4 lb chicken. Boneless breast will be dry long before the potatoes are done; use thighs and drumsticks if you want boneless-friendly timing to match.
- 1 can of tomatoesA period No. 2 can held roughly 2 1/2 cups, about 20 oz, though "one can" in this period could also mean a larger size. A 15-20 oz can is the nearer modern match; if you use a 28 oz can, drain off some of the juice, since the vegetables release liquid as they cook.
- Dish size and layeringThree sweet potatoes and six white potatoes plus a whole chicken needs a deep 4-quart casserole or a 9x13 pan filled to the rim. Slice the potatoes about 1/4 inch; thicker slices will still be firm at the two-hour mark.
- BaconBacon of this period was often more heavily salted and smoked than much supermarket bacon now. Taste before adding much salt, and lay the slices between the layers rather than on top, where they would simply scorch over three hours.
- YieldSix generous servings. It reheats well and is arguably better the next day, once the tomato and the potato starch have set together.
The name is a puzzle worth noticing: an empanada is a Spanish or Latin American filled pastry, and this dish has no pastry at all 14 it is a layered pot pie of sorts, chicken and two kinds of potato baked under a potato lid. Books of this era borrowed Spanish and Mexican dish names loosely, and the sweet potato and tomato point to a Southern or Gulf Coast household. A Calendar of Dinners itself was a Procter & Gamble publication by Marion Harris Neil, built around Crisco, which the company had launched in 1911 as a shelf-stable substitute for lard and butter; recipes in it name the product by brand as a matter of course, which is why two tablespoons of shortening get a mention here.