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August 2
Menu: Braised Lettuce; Beef Olives; Stuffed Potatoes; Lady Fingers; Beet Salad Cheese Relish; Red Currant Cream; Coffee Beef Olives-Cut 2 pounds of steak into pieces 4½ inches long and 2 inches wide. Mix together in basin 3 tablespoons breadcrumbs, 1 a chopped onion, 4 tablespoons Crisco, 1 tablespoon chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and paprika to taste and 1 well beaten egg. Spread a little of this mixture on each piece of meat, roll up and tie with fine string. Melt 2 tablespoons Crisco in a pan, brown pieces of meat in it; stir in 1 tablespoon flour, gradually add 2 cups water, bring to boiling point and cook slowly 12 hours. Remove string and dish in a circle, season the gravy and strain over the meat.
A straightforward braise of stuffed beef rolls, printed as part of Crisco's day-by-day dinner calendar. One number in the original is plainly a typesetting error, and it is the number that matters most.
- The "12 hours" is a misprintBeef rolls this size are done in about 1½ hours of gentle simmering, covered. The original almost certainly read 1½ hours; twelve would reduce the gravy to nothing and the meat to threads.
- Cut of steakUse a braising cut — chuck, round, or flank — sliced across into thin pieces and pounded to about ¼ inch. Modern "steak" sold for the pan is too lean and expensive for this treatment.
- CriscoThe 1913 product was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, firm at room temperature. Vegetable shortening still works; butter, lard, or oil are all fine substitutes, and butter improves the stuffing.
- Raw Crisco in the stuffingThe 4 tablespoons of shortening worked into the crumbs are there to keep the filling moist during the braise. If you use oil instead, cut it back to 2 tablespoons or the filling will not hold together.
- Tying and browningKitchen twine or toothpicks both work; toothpicks are easier to find and remove. Brown the rolls in batches so the pan stays hot enough to colour rather than steam them.
- The gravyOne tablespoon of flour to two cups of water gives a very thin sauce by modern taste. Straining is the original's finishing step — expect to reduce it further, or use stock rather than water for body.
- YieldTwo pounds of steak makes roughly 10 to 12 rolls, serving four to six. The instruction to "dish in a circle" means arranging them on a round platter with the sauce poured over.
Beef olives have nothing to do with olives except shape: the name is generally traced to the small oval bundle the rolled and tied meat forms, and the dish appears in English cookery books — securely attested in print from the eighteenth century — as a way to make thin, tough slices of beef go further with a bread stuffing. It belongs to the same family as German Rouladen, French paupiettes, and Italian involtini. Its appearance here, dated August 3, reflects the purpose of The Story of Crisco: Procter & Gamble published the book in 1913 to persuade cooks that their new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening could stand in for butter and lard in every role at once, so the recipe calls for Crisco twice — once creamed into the stuffing where butter would go, once melted in the pan where lard or drippings would go.