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August 18
Menu: Fish Souffle; Braised Stuffed Shoulder of Mutton; Breaded Potatoes *Carrots, a la Poulette; Pineapple Jelly; French Pastry; Coffee Carrots, a la Poulette-Boil 2 bunches of carrots until tender in boiling salted water, then drain. Blend 2 tablespoons Crisco with 1 tablespoon flour, when smooth add 1 cup milk and stir till boiling, add salt, pepper and paprika to taste, 1 tablespoon chopped parsley and cook for 5 minutes, then add carrots and allow to cook for 5 minutes longer. Serve hot.
A plain white-sauce vegetable dish from the dated menu calendar at the back of the Crisco book. Two small things need attention: the fat-to-flour ratio, and the fact that this is not what a French kitchen would call à la poulette.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, launched shortly before this book was printed and promoted in it on every page. Butter makes a better sauce for carrots and can be swapped in tablespoon for tablespoon; a neutral oil works but gives a slacker roux.
- Two bunches of carrotsBunch size is not standardised and was not then either; something in the region of 2 lb, or roughly 12 to 16 medium carrots, is a reasonable reading. Weigh rather than count.
- The roux is fat-heavyTwo tablespoons of shortening to one of flour will not bind a full cup of milk into a coating sauce; expect something thin. Equal parts fat and flour, 2 tablespoons of each, will give a sauce that coats, if that is what you want.
- Cut before boilingThe recipe does not say how to cut the carrots. Whole young carrots take 15 to 20 minutes in salted water; sliced or batonned, 8 to 12. Drain them well or the residual water will thin the sauce further.
- About the nameA true sauce poulette is a velouté finished with egg yolk and lemon. This version is a straight milk-based white sauce with parsley. A yolk beaten with a little lemon juice, stirred in off the heat at the end, brings it closer to the French original.
- PaprikaSweet paprika is meant, used as much for the colour against the white sauce as for flavour. Smoked paprika will dominate the dish.
- YieldTwo bunches will stretch to four to six as a side dish. It reheats poorly once the sauce has set, so make it close to serving.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913, two years after Crisco itself went on sale, and it is a piece of advertising as much as a cookbook: the recipes were assembled by Marion Harris Neil, then cookery editor of Ladies' Home Journal, and the collection is built entirely around the product. A dated menu calendar of this kind gave a housekeeper a suggested table for each day of the year, which is why the recipe carries the note "August 16." The dish itself belongs to the long American habit of dressing boiled vegetables in a milk sauce, borrowed from French service and given a French name that had drifted loose from its original meaning; poulette is the feminine of poulet, and the sauce is traditionally said to take its name from an association with chicken, though it was applied to tripe, mussels and much else besides.