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Cheese Souffle
3 Tablespoonfuls Snowdrift ¾ Cupful Grated American Cheese 1 Teaspoonful Salt 1/2 Teaspoonful Paprika 1/2 Cupful Bread Crumbs 1 Cupful Milk 4 Eggs Melt the Snowdrift in a double-boiler top, add the cheese, paprika, crumbs, salt and milk, and cook the mixture together over hot water until the cheese has melted.
Then separate the eggs, beat the yolks until lemon-colored, add the crumb mixture, and fold the whole into the egg whites, whipped until stiff. Transfer to a medium-sized baking dish, which has been lightly rubbed with Snowdrift, and bake about thirty-five minutes in a moderate oven, 350 degrees F.
A straightforward crumb-thickened cheese souffle from a shortening manufacturer's promotional book. The method is sound; only the branded fat and a couple of proportions need translating.
- SnowdriftA cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company (hydrogenated in its later formulations). Substitute an equal amount of butter for better flavour, or any neutral solid shortening if you want the original texture.
- The cheese quantityThe cheese measure is printed as "34 Cupful," which is a broken three-quarters of a cup. Three-quarters cup grated, roughly 3 ounces, is right for this volume of milk and crumbs.
- American cheeseIn this period the term meant a firm domestic cheddar, not a processed slice. Use a sharp cheddar and grate it fine so it melts smoothly into the milk.
- OvenThe book gives 350F outright. Bake on a low rack and do not open the door for the first 25 minutes.
- FoldingLet the crumb and cheese base cool to warm before it meets the yolks, and add roughly a quarter of the whipped whites first to slacken it. Folding a hot, stiff base straight into stiff whites collapses them.
- Egg whitesWhip to firm peaks that still bend at the tip, not dry and grainy. Over-beaten whites break up in the fold and the souffle rises unevenly.
- Dish and yieldA "medium-sized baking dish" is unspecified; for four eggs and a cup of milk a dish of about 1 1/2 quarts, straight-sided, is a reasonable reading. It will serve roughly four as a light main course, six as a side.
- ServingTake it to the table straight from the oven. It will begin sinking within a few minutes, which is normal for a crumb-based souffle.
This comes from a manufacturer's cookbook, a genre that flourished in the United States from the 1890s onward: a food company would commission a domestic-science writer to produce a slim volume in which every recipe called for the company's product. Snowdrift was a hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening from the Southern Cotton Oil Company, competing directly with Crisco, and its cookbooks worked hard to show the fat doing everything butter and lard did. The dish itself is the thrifty American branch of the souffle family, stretched with bread crumbs rather than built on a flour roux, which makes it more forgiving than a classic French cheese souffle. The specific oven temperature is a marker of its era: by the 1910s and 1920s, as ranges with thermometers were beginning to spread, cookbooks had begun printing degrees alongside the older language of slow, moderate and quick.