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Vegetables En Casserole
1 cup diced celery 1 cup diced, sliced onion 2 cups thinly sliced raw potato string beans 1½ teaspoons salt Few grains pepper 1 pint canned tomato 1 tablespoon Argo or Kings- 1 cup diced, fresh or cooked ford's Cornstarch 1/2 tablespoon Karo, Blue Label 2 tablespoons Mazola 1/2 cup fine dry bread crumbs 3/4 cup grated American cheese Add the Karo to the Mazola and fry the onion until yellowed. Add the other vegetables with the exception of the tomato. Stir in the seasonings and cornstarch and put in layers in a baking dish, with the tomato. Add enough soup stock or water to barely cover the vegetables. Spread the crumbs and cheese mixed, over the top, cover and bake an hour in a moderate oven, 350 to 375 degrees F., then uncover and cook thirty minutes longer. Fresh or canned corn, lima beans, diced turnips, beets, cauliflower-almost any vegetable may be used.
A layered vegetable bake from a corn-products promotional booklet, which explains the brand names running through the ingredient list. The method is sound; only the pantry has changed.
- The ingredient list, sorted outThe quantities are: 1 cup diced celery, 1 cup diced or sliced onion, 2 cups thinly sliced raw potato, 1 cup diced string beans (fresh or cooked), 1½ teaspoons salt, a few grains pepper, 1 pint canned tomato, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, ½ tablespoon Karo, 2 tablespoons Mazola, ½ cup fine dry bread crumbs, ¾ cup grated American cheese.
- Brand namesArgo and Kingsford's cornstarch is plain cornstarch. Mazola is corn oil, and any neutral oil works. Karo Blue Label was one of the lighter Karo syrups (the brand also sold a Crystal White and a darker Red Label); the half tablespoon may help the onion colour, and a pinch of sugar would do the same job.
- American cheeseIn this period the term meant a firm, mild factory cheddar, not the processed slice. Use a mild or medium cheddar and grate it yourself so it browns rather than weeps.
- OvenThe recipe gives a number alongside the old formula: 'a moderate oven, 350 to 375 degrees F.' Bake covered at 350F for the first hour if your dish is shallow, since the top crumbs will otherwise dry before the potato is done.
- The hinge: slice the potato thinEverything cooks by steaming in barely enough liquid to cover, and the raw potato is the slowest element. Cut it no thicker than an eighth of an inch or the ninety minutes will leave it firm at the centre.
- CornstarchStirred dry through the vegetables, it thickens the tomato and stock as they cook down. Toss it in thoroughly so it does not settle in lumps at the bottom of the dish.
- Liquid"Barely cover" means roughly a cup to a cup and a half of stock or water for this quantity, depending on the depth of your dish. Err low; the tomato and vegetables release a good deal more.
- YieldAbout six side servings, or four as a main course. The vegetables and tomato come to some seven cups before the liquid goes in, so use a dish of at least two and a half quarts. The final uncovered half hour is what sets the cheese crust, so do not shorten it.
This comes from a booklet published to sell the products of a corn refiner, which is why cornstarch, corn syrup and corn oil all appear in a dish of celery, potato and tomato that needs only two of them. Promotional cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s were given away free with a purchase or mailed for a stamp, and they are often credited with helping to standardise measured cups and stated oven temperatures at a time when general cookbooks still said "a moderate oven" and left it there. The dish itself belongs to the American vegetable casserole tradition that flourished with the spread of the gas range and the enamelled baking dish, and the closing line inviting corn, lima beans, turnip, beet or cauliflower shows what it really was: a frame for whatever the garden or the pantry shelf had produced.