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Farmer's Dish
3 cups sliced cooked potatoes 1 can corn 1 tablespoon onion, minced Salt and pepper 2 tablespoons shortening 1 cup milk 1/3 cup cracker crumbs In a deep, well greased baking dish, place layers of the cooked potato and corn, seasoning with salt, pepper, onion and bits of shortening. Repeat until dish is full. Cover with crumbs and shortening, then add milk. Bake in moderate oven for 45 minutes. Serves 6.
A plain layered vegetable bake of the kind that turned leftover boiled potatoes into supper. It needs almost no adjustment beyond a stated oven temperature and a little attention to seasoning.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is 350F. Forty-five minutes at that heat sets the milk and browns the crumb top; if the top colours too fast, lay foil over it for the last fifteen minutes.
- The canned cornCanned corn of this era was usually sold in a No. 2 can, nearer 20 oz than today's 15-16 oz standard, so a modern can may run a little small. Drain it well, or the liquid plus the milk will leave the dish soupy. Cream-style corn will also work, in which case reduce the milk.
- ShorteningThis means vegetable shortening or lard, dotted in small bits between the layers and over the crumbs. Butter gives better flavour and behaves the same way; the recipe's 2 tablespoons covers both the layers and the top.
- Cracker crumbsCrushed soda crackers or saltines, not sweet crumbs. Toss the 1/3 cup with melted shortening before scattering, or the top layer stays pale and dusty.
- Season each layerThe only flavour here is salt, pepper and raw minced onion, so distribute them layer by layer rather than all at once. A cook who wants more can soften the onion in the shortening first, which takes out its raw edge.
- Add the milk lastPouring the milk over the assembled dish, as written, lets it settle through the layers without floating the crumbs off the top. Pour slowly around the edge.
- Dish size and yieldA 2-quart baking dish holds this comfortably; the recipe says to fill it, so scale the layers to what you have. Six modest servings as a side, four as a main with bread.
Dishes like this one belong to the scalloped-vegetable tradition that filled American cookbooks from the late nineteenth century onward: cooked starch, a canned vegetable, milk, and a crumb top, baked until set. Canned sweet corn was among the cheapest and most reliably stocked items on a pantry shelf, and cooked potatoes were the commonest leftover, which is the sort of thrift the dish is built around.