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Bread (Teaspoonful mustard Whipped)
1 teaspoonful mustard Whipped cream 6 Mix sugar, flour, salt, mustard and red pepper together, add eggs, vinegar, Crisco, and water and cook in double boiler until thick, stirring all the time. To every tablespoonful of dressing add equal quantity of whipped cream. Skin and slice tomatoes very thin, dip slices into dressing and place between thin slices of buttered bread. Cut into finger shaped pieces.
Sufficient for thirty sandwiches.
The page has come down to us with its ingredient list mangled — only the mustard and whipped cream survive of what was clearly a cooked (boiled) salad dressing built on sugar, flour, salt, red pepper, eggs, vinegar, Crisco and water. The method is complete enough to follow if you supply standard proportions for that dressing.
- The missing quantitiesOnly "1 teaspoonful mustard" and "whipped cream" are legible, plus a stray "6" no longer attached to any ingredient; the sugar, flour, salt, red pepper, egg, vinegar, fat and water amounts are lost. Any set of figures for the dressing -- say 1 tablespoon each flour and sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup vinegar, 1 tablespoon fat and 3/4 cup water -- is a reconstruction only, not what the book said, and would need scaling up for the quantity the recipe implies.
- CriscoThe book exists to sell it. Crisco here is simply a neutral solid shortening; butter or a mild oil will do the same job in a cooked dressing.
- Double boilerNot optional. A flour-and-egg dressing curdles over direct heat. Keep the water below a boil, stir constantly, and pull the pan the moment the mixture coats a spoon heavily — it thickens further as it cools.
- The whipped cream is folded, not stirredEqual parts by volume, added only when the dressing is completely cold. Warm dressing will deflate the cream and the mixture will weep into the bread within minutes.
- Keeping the sandwiches from going soggyThe hinge of the whole thing. Salt the tomato slices, lay them on paper towel for fifteen minutes and blot before dipping, and butter the bread right to the edges — the butter is a moisture barrier, not a flavouring.
- Slicing"Very thin" is all the book says; a serrated knife and a firm, slightly underripe tomato make it easier. The recipe directs that the finished sandwiches be cut into finger shaped pieces.
- Yield and timingThe book gives the dressing as sufficient for thirty sandwiches, each then cut into finger-shaped pieces. Assemble no more than an hour ahead and hold under a damp cloth in the refrigerator; the cream dressing will not sit overnight.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a then-new product: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold as a shortening that was neither butter nor lard. Its recipes are conventional early-twentieth-century American cookery with Crisco written into them throughout, which is why a cooked salad dressing here calls for the branded fat. Cooked or "boiled" dressing itself is older than the book -- a vinegar-and-egg mixture thickened with flour over water, it served as an alternative to mayonnaise in kitchens without a ready supply of good oil. Lightening it with whipped cream and pairing it with thin tomato on buttered bread places this in the era's tea-table repertoire, when sandwiches cut into fingers were a common form of afternoon hospitality.