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Fruit Crisps
1/2 cup shortening 1 cup sugar grated rind of 1 orange 1 tablespoon lemon juice 2 eggs pastry flour candied peel, fruits, nuts Cream shortening, add sugar, grated orange rind and lemon juice, 1 egg and yolk of another, well beaten. Then add enough sifted pastry flour to form a dough that will knead. Chill over night. Roll very thin and cut in fancy shapes. Brush over with beaten egg white mixed with 2 tablespoons of cold water and decorate with fancy designs, done in strips of candied fruits, peel, etc. Bake until crisp. Makes five dozen 2 1/2 inch cookies.
A rolled icebox cookie in the 1930s style, decorated before baking rather than iced afterward. The original leaves both the flour quantity and the oven heat to the cook's judgment, so those are the two things to settle before you start.
- Flour quantityThe recipe says only "enough sifted pastry flour to form a dough that will knead," which for this amount of fat, sugar and egg lands around 2 to 2 1/2 cups. Add it in stages and stop as soon as the dough holds together without sticking; extra flour is the usual cause of tough, pale crisps.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. For thin rolled cookies of this type, 350-375F is right, 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges just colour. "Bake until crisp" means baked through and dry, not browned.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer and lower in protein than all-purpose. If you have none, substitute all-purpose with a portion replaced by cornstarch, roughly 2 tablespoons cornstarch per cup, to bring the strength down.
- ShorteningIn this period "shortening" means vegetable shortening or lard. Butter works and tastes better with the orange rind, but the dough will spread slightly more and needs the full overnight chill.
- The overnight chillThis is not optional. The dough must be firm and cold to roll very thin without tearing, and cold dough holds the cut shapes crisply in the oven. Roll one portion at a time and keep the rest refrigerated.
- Egg useOne whole egg plus one yolk goes into the dough. The leftover white is the wash: beat it with the 2 tablespoons cold water and brush it on before the candied fruit goes down, so the decoration adheres.
- DecoratingCandied peel and glace fruit scorch faster than the dough. Cut the strips small, press them flat into the wash, and check the cookies at the shorter end of the baking time.
- YieldFive dozen 2 1/2-inch cookies assumes a genuinely thin sheet, about 1/8 inch. Rolled thicker you will get half that number and a softer cookie.
Chilled, stiff rolled doughs of this kind turn up widely in cookbooks of the period, and a cold dough can be rolled thinner than one worked at room temperature. The decoration is older than the recipe: strips of candied citrus peel and glace fruit laid on an egg-white wash before baking is commonly associated with European Christmas baking, and it survives in American company-cookie chapters like this one because it looks elaborate while costing only a few pennies of peel. Placing them under "Extra-Special Company Cakes and Cookies" tells you their purpose exactly: something to hand round on a plate to visitors, made days ahead and kept crisp in a tin.