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Plain Shortcake
2¼ cups flour 1/4 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 5 teaspoons baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon Karo, Red or Blue Label 1 cup milk 4 tablespoons Mazola Sift the dry ingredients together, stir in the Mazola, Karo and milk and transfer to two layer cake pans oiled with Mazola. Bake in a hot oven, 375 degrees F. about twenty-five minutes, then butter and put together with the desired fruit filling. Serve with whipped cream or Fluffy Fruit Sauce which is an excellent substitute. If desired, the shortcake can be baked individually.
A promotional recipe from a corn-products cookbook, which explains why cornstarch, corn syrup and corn oil all appear in a shortcake that needs none of them. It works, and the method is unusually quick because there is no fat to cut in.
- The brand namesArgo or Kingsford's cornstarch is plain cornstarch; Mazola is corn oil, and any neutral oil will stand in for it. Karo was sold in Red and Blue Label grades, Blue being the paler, milder syrup; either will work here, with the Red giving a slightly deeper colour.
- Oven temperatureThe book calls 375F a "hot oven," which is at the low end by period standards, where "hot" was often given as 400F or above. Ignore the adjective and use the number: 375F for about 25 minutes, until the tops are pale gold and spring back.
- Baking powderFive teaspoons to 2 1/2 cups of dry ingredients is a high proportion by modern standards. Four teaspoons will give plenty of lift and less risk of a metallic aftertaste.
- Why the cornstarchReplacing a quarter cup of flour with cornstarch dilutes the gluten and gives a softer, more tender crumb -- the same trick used to make homemade cake flour. Sift it thoroughly with the flour or it will streak.
- The tablespoon of syrupIt is there for browning and moisture, not sweetness; this is an unsweetened shortcake meant to be filled with sugared fruit. Honey or sugar dissolved in the milk will do the same job.
- HandlingThis is a soft batter rather than a rolled dough, so stir only until it comes together and spread it in the pans with an oiled spatula. Overmixing after the liquid goes in is the one thing that will toughen it.
- Pans and assemblyTwo round layer pans, 8- or 9-inch. Butter the layers while still hot so it soaks in, then fill and serve the same day; shortcake is at its best fresh.
- YieldTwo layers serve six to eight. Baked individually they will need appreciably less than the twenty-five minutes given; check them early.
This comes from a manufacturer's cookbook, a genre that flourished in the United States from the 1890s through the 1930s: a company printed a booklet of recipes in which its own products were indispensable, and gave it away or sold it for a few cents. Corn Products Refining Company owned all three brands named here -- Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch, Karo syrup and Mazola oil -- so a single plain shortcake could be made to advertise the whole catalogue. The recipe is also a marker of a real shift in baking: traditional shortcake was a biscuit dough with solid fat rubbed into flour, while this one uses liquid oil stirred straight in, a method that only became practical for home bakers once refined vegetable oils were cheap and shelf-stable. Mazola, introduced in the early twentieth century, was among the products that made that possible, and "Fluffy Fruit Sauce" recommended here as a substitute for whipped cream would have been another recipe elsewhere in the same book.