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Vegetable Souffle
Blend 3 tablespoons Crisco with 2 tablespoons flour, add 1 cup milk, stir till boiling, add 1/2 cup grated cheese, yolks of 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, seasoning of salt, pepper, and red pepper, and cook till it thickens. Remove from fire and fold in stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Put some pieces of boiled cauliflower into Criscoed mold, then slices of seasoned tomatoes. Pour in mixture, sprinkle on few crumbs and bake till firm. Garnish with watercress and serve immediately.
A cheese soufflé base poured over cooked vegetables, from the era when Crisco was the newest thing in the pantry. The measurements are sound; only the vessel and the oven need translating.
- Crisco, and what to use insteadCrisco was newly on the market when this book appeared, and the recipe exists partly to sell it. Butter works better here for flavour in both the roux and the greased mold; any neutral solid shortening will behave the same way structurally.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Bake at 350F. A soufflé this small sets in roughly 25 to 35 minutes, and is done when the centre no longer trembles as a liquid when the dish is nudged.
- "Criscoed mold"Not a decorative jelly mold but a straight-sided baking dish of about 1 quart. Grease it thoroughly and, if you want any rise at all, do not fill it more than three-quarters full.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not chilli flakes. A pinch is enough to sharpen the cheese; the recipe assumes restraint.
- Only two eggsThe whites of the same two eggs whose yolks went into the sauce. This is a modest, dense souffle rather than a towering one.
- Fold off the heat, and cool slightlyLet the thickened sauce lose its steam before the whites go in, or they will deflate on contact. Fold in two or three additions with a light hand and get the dish into the oven at once.
- Drain the vegetablesBoiled cauliflower and sliced tomatoes both release water. Drain the cauliflower well and let the tomato slices sit salted on paper for a few minutes, or the base of the dish will be soupy.
- Yield and servingTwo generous or three small portions as a lunch or supper dish. "Serve immediately" is not decoration ": it will begin to sink within a few minutes of leaving the oven.
This comes from the Crisco cookbooks that Procter & Gamble commissioned in the 1910s to teach American cooks what to do with a hydrogenated vegetable shortening "a product that had no place in any existing recipe tradition. Hence a souffle that specifies Crisco twice, including for greasing the mold. The dish itself is older and French in ancestry: a bechamel enriched with yolks and cheese, lightened with beaten whites, which is the standard savoury souffle formula codified in nineteenth-century French cookery and thoroughly domesticated in English and American household books by 1900.