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April 7
Menu: Grilled Brook Trout; Spring Lamb Steak, a la Minute; Lentil Croquettes; Potato Rissoles; Grapefruit Salad; Cheese; Crackers; Golden Parfait; Coffee Spring Lamb Steak, a la Minute-Rub some fillets of spring lamb steak with salt and pepper, and fry them gently in 3 tablespoons Crisco which has been melted in an iron frying pan, until thoroughly cooked. Remove from frying pan and keep hot. Put 12 large fresh mushroom caps in pan and cook until tender, adding 14 serve. Corn Chowder Broiled Steak Baked Potatoes Horseradish, Cream Dressing Scalloped Tomatoes Celery Salad Cherry Sponge Coffee Corn Chowder-1 can corn, 1 cup salt pork cut in cubes, 1 cup potatoes, 1/2 cup chopped onions, salt and red pepper to taste, 3 cups water, 2 cups milk, 1 tablespoon Crisco, 1 tablespoon flour, and 1/2 cup crackercrumbs. Cook salt pork in frying pan for 5 minutes; add onion and cook until a yellow color. Parboil potatoes 5 minutes; add to onion with corn and water; cook 20 minutes. Thicken milk with Crisco and flour cooked together. Combine mixtures; add crackercrumbs and salt and pepper to taste, then serve.
The text as printed is damaged: the sauce step breaks off mid-sentence at "adding 14 serve," so the finishing liquid is lost. What survives is a straightforward pan-fried lamb steak with mushrooms, and it works if you supply your own judgment for the last step.
- The missing quantityThe surviving "14" is probably a mangled "1/4," but no unit and no liquid are named, so what was to be added is unknown. Treat the finish as your own deglaze rather than a reconstruction.
- "A la minute"Restaurant shorthand for cooked to order in a pan rather than roasted or braised. It signals thin cuts and no resting of the dish in a warm oven — the mushrooms are meant to go from pan to plate. Note that this recipe nonetheless says to fry the lamb gently.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, the product this whole book exists to sell. Three tablespoons of any neutral fat behaves the same here; butter will brown faster and flavor the mushrooms more.
- "Until thoroughly cooked"Likely meant well done. Many cooks today take leg or shoulder steaks off nearer 130-135F for a pink centre, though official guidance for whole cuts of lamb is 145F; cooked well done, a thin steak turns dry and tight.
- The cut"Spring lamb" indicates a young animal; the recipe's "fillets of spring lamb steak" would today most likely correspond to a lamb leg steak or shoulder blade chop. The page gives no thickness.
- The iron pan mattersCast iron holds heat when the cold steaks go in, which is the difference between a browned crust and steamed meat. Get the fat shimmering before the lamb touches it.
- Mushrooms after the meatTwelve caps in a pan that already holds lamb fat and fond will release water first, then take on color. Do not crowd them or stir constantly; give them room and let the liquid cook off before adding any finishing liquid.
- YieldThe page states no yield. Twelve mushroom caps would divide evenly among four (three apiece), but that is a guess.
This comes from a Procter & Gamble Crisco recipe book — The Story of Crisco (1913) and the closely related "A Calendar of Dinners" — publications that wrapped a genuine cookbook around the promotion of a then-new product: cottonseed oil hydrogenated into a solid white shortening. The menus run across an entire year, which is why a French-tinged restaurant preparation like a steak a la minute sits beside plain corn chowder. "Spring lamb" was a real seasonal category rather than a marketing phrase — lambs born in late winter came to market in spring and early summer, and the meat was prized for tenderness, which is exactly why it suited a quick pan treatment instead of the long roasting older mutton demanded.
A straightforward salt-pork chowder from the day-by-day dinner calendar at the back of The Story of Crisco. Two things need attention: the vague can and cup measures, and the point at which the milk goes in.
- The hinge: add the milk last, off a hard boilThe white sauce (Crisco and flour cooked together, then milk) is combined with the pork-and-potato base at the end. Keep it below a simmer once combined or the milk will catch on the bottom and scorch, and the flour will loosen its grip.
- "1 can corn"In 1913 this probably meant something close to a No. 2 can, around 20 oz; the nearest common modern can is 15 oz. Canned corn of the period came both cream style and whole kernel, and the recipe does not say which; cream style will give a thicker result.
- Cups as volume, not weightThe potatoes and salt pork are measured diced, by the cup: figure about 6 oz of potato (one medium, in 1/2-inch dice) and 5-6 oz of salt pork. Cut the pork small so it renders properly in five minutes.
- CriscoPlain vegetable shortening. Butter or oil substitutes one for one here; the roux is only a tablespoon each of fat and flour, so the choice is about flavor, not structure.
- Red pepperCayenne, in the pinch range rather than the teaspoon range. Not paprika and not crushed chile flakes.
- Cracker crumbsCoarsely crushed soda crackers or saltines, about 1/2 cup. They thicken as they sit, so add them just before serving unless you want a nearly spoon-standing chowder.
- SaltSeason only at the end. Salt pork and cracker crumbs both carry a good deal, and the recipe's "to taste" is doing real work.
- YieldAbout five cups of liquid plus solids, which serves four generously as a first course or three as a supper.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913 to explain a genuinely new product: a hydrogenated cottonseed oil shortening that behaved like lard but came from a plant, and so could be sold to cooks who kept kosher kitchens or who distrusted the butcher's rendering. The book's "Calendar of Dinners" assigned a full menu to every day of the year, and this chowder is the April 10 entry. Corn chowder itself is much older than Crisco and belongs to the New England tradition of pork-fat-and-milk chowders, in which salt pork is rendered first and the drippings carry everything that follows; the word chowder is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron. What marks the recipe as an advertisement is the single tablespoon of Crisco in the white sauce, doing a job butter had always done, in a dish whose flavor still comes almost entirely from cured pork.