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Spanish Rice
1/2 cupful Crisco 1/2 cupful grated cheese 6 tablespoonfuls rice 1 can tomatoes 5 small onions 1 cupful hot water Salt and red pepper to taste 1/4 cupful chopped olives Wash rice and put it in bowl, add Crisco, seasonings, cheese, hot water, tomatoes, olives, and onions cut in small pieces. Turn into a Criscoed fireproof dish and bake in moderate oven one hour, or until rice is tender.
A Crisco advertising recipe, and it reads like one: half a cup of shortening for a third of a cup of rice. The method is unusual in that everything goes into the dish raw and cold except the water, so the liquid balance and a lid are what determine success.
- CriscoCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, sold under the same name today though reformulated to remove trans fats. Half a cupful is far more than the dish needs; 2 to 3 tablespoons of any neutral fat, or olive oil, gives a better result and does not leave a slick on the surface.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F, though period usage for 'moderate' runs 350 to 375F. The recipe gives no covering instruction; see the next point.
- Cover the dishThis is the hinge. Rice baked an hour at 350F in an open dish will dry out and stay chalky on top. Cover tightly with a lid or foil for the first 45 minutes, then uncover to let the surface set.
- Rice and liquidSix tablespoonfuls is a generous 1/3 cup of raw long-grain rice, which will swell to roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups cooked. A cup of hot water plus a can of tomatoes with their juice is generous for that quantity; with a modern 14.5 oz can, about 2/3 cup of water is enough.
- Can tomatoesWhole canned tomatoes in juice, not sauce or puree. Break them up with your hands or a spoon before they go in, or you will get pockets of intact tomato and dry rice around them.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not a fresh red pepper. A generous pinch is enough for this volume.
- CheeseThe original does not name a variety; a firm grating cheese such as an aged Cheddar is in keeping. Adding half of it at the start and scattering the rest over the top in the last ten minutes gives a better crust than burying it all.
- OnionsFive small onions is a lot of raw allium going in unsoftened. Two medium onions, diced, is closer to a modern balance, and sweating them first improves the dish considerably.
- YieldFour servings as a side dish, two as a light supper.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which the company launched in 1911; that explains why shortening appears in quantities no cook would otherwise use and why the dish is directed into a "Criscoed" pan rather than a buttered one. "Spanish rice" in American cookbooks of this period rarely had much to do with Spain: the label was applied broadly to rice cooked with tomato, onion and pepper, and the name is often said to derive from the tomato-and-rice cookery of Mexico and the Southwest as it filtered into Eastern kitchens, though this is a traditional account rather than a documented one. Canned tomatoes made it a year-round dish, and the chopped olives are the touch that marked it as "Spanish" to a reader of the day.