Home › Recipes › Calumet Fruit Pockets
Calumet Fruit Pockets
1/4 cup chopped citron 2 cups pastry flour 2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 heaping tablespoon of butter 2/3 cup milk (scant) Sift flour, then measure, add baking powder and sift three times, chop in butter and mix with milk to a soft dough, turn out on a well floured board, roll out 1/2 inch thick, cut the dough in ovals. On each put a spoonful of filling, brush edges of dough with white of egg, fold over to make a pointed oval cake, turn plain side up, press lightly to flatten. With sharp scissors make three short cuts across top. Sift over a little powdered sugar, place well apart on greased pans and bake in a quick oven till pale brown. 1/4 cup chopped raisins cup chopped citron 1/4 cup chopped nut meats 1/4 cup currants 2 tablespoons granulated sugar Stir all ingredients together thoroughly.
Filling 1/4 teaspoon allspice 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon Pinch of cloves 2 tablespoons orange juice 1 tablespoon lemon juice 3 tablespoons sugar 1/8 teaspoon salt
A baking-powder biscuit dough folded over a spiced dried-fruit filling, from one of the promotional cookbooks issued by the Calumet Baking Powder Company. It behaves like a rich scone turnover rather than a pastry.
- Quick ovenA "quick oven" is usually given as around 400-425F. At that heat the pockets need roughly 12-15 minutes; pull them while still pale brown, since the sifted sugar on top can scorch before the dough does.
- Flour is missing from the listThe dough as printed gives no flour quantity. A biscuit dough of this type takes about 2 cups of flour to 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 heaping tablespoon butter and 2/3 cup milk; treat that as a reconstruction, not the book's figure.
- Calumet baking powderCalumet was a double-acting phosphate and sodium aluminum sulfate powder. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes measure for measure.
- Sift, then measureThis instruction is not decorative. Sifting first and then measuring by dipping gives roughly 4 oz per cup rather than the 5 oz or so an unsifted, scooped cup yields, and the dough may come out dry if you skip it.
- Chop in the butter"Chop in" means cutting cold butter through the flour with two knives or a pastry blender until it is in small flakes. Do not rub it to a paste; the visible butter is what makes the pockets flaky.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold with the glace fruit at Christmas. Chop it fine; if you cannot find it, candied orange peel is the nearest substitute. The quantity has dropped out of the printed list, but 1/4 cup matches the other fruits.
- Sealing the edgesEgg white is the glue. Brush a narrow band only, press firmly, and keep filling off the seam or the pockets will spring open in the oven.
- The scissor cutsThree short snips across the top are steam vents. Cut through the top layer only, not down into the filling.
- YieldExpect about a dozen pockets from a 2-cup dough rolled 1/2 inch thick. They are best the day they are baked; reheat briefly at 325F to revive them.
"Reliable Recipes" was a giveaway booklet from the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, one of the most successful examples of a genre that flourished from the 1890s into the 1930s: the branded cookbook, distributed free or for a coupon, in which every leavened recipe names the sponsor's product by the spoonful. Calumet was founded in the 1880s and became a leading double-acting powder before being absorbed by General Foods in 1928. The filling here is essentially a mincemeat without the meat or suet, and the pocket itself belongs to the long tradition of enclosed hand pastries, from Cornish pasties to the fried fruit pies of the American South. What marks it as an early twentieth-century recipe is the dough: chemical leavening had made a quick biscuit crust the default for home baking, replacing the yeast doughs and lard pastes that would have carried the same filling a generation earlier.