Chicken
Select young tender chickens and disjoint. Wash carefully and let stand over night in refrigerator.
A (Kate B. Vaughn) Drain chicken but do not wipe dry. Season with salt and white pepper and dredge well with flour. Fry in deep Crisco hot enough to brown a crumb of bread in sixty seconds. It requires from ten to twelve minutes to fry chicken. Drain and place on a hot platter garnished with parsley and rice croquettes.
B (Kate B. Vaughn) Make batter of 1 cupful flour, 1 teaspoonful salt, 2 grains white pepper, ½ cupful water, 2 well beaten eggs, and 1 tablespoonful melted Crisco. Have kettle of Crisco hot enough to turn crumb of bread a golden brown in sixty seconds. Drain chicken but do not dry. Dip each joint separately in batter and fry in the Crisco until golden brown. It should take from ten to twelve minutes. Serve on a folded napkin garnished with parsley. C (Kate B Vaughn) Drain chicken but do not wipe dry. Season with salt and white pepper and dredge well with flour. Put three tablespoonfuls Crisco in frying pan and when hot place chicken in pan; cover, and allow to steam for ten minutes. Uncover, and allow chicken to brown, taking care to turn frequently. Serve on hot platter, garnished with parsley and serve with cream gravy.
Meats Select medium-sized chickens and wash well, then cut into neat pieces and season them. Mix 1 cupful cornmeal with 1 cupful flour, 1 tablespoonful salt and 1 tablespoonful black pepper. Dip each piece in mixture and fry in hot Crisco twelve minutes. Drain and serve with cornmeal batter bread.
E Wash young chicken, cut into neat pieces, dust with salt, pepper, and flour, and fry in hot Crisco twelve minutes. Drain, place on hot platter, pour over it 1/2 pint hot sweet cream, sprinkle over with chopped hot roasted peanuts, little salt and pepper.
Fried Chicken, Mexican Style 1 tender chicken Salt and pepper to taste 1 clove garlic 1 can or 14 ears corn 1 seeded green pepper 2 large tomatoes 5 tablespoonfuls Crisco Corn croquettes
Five variations on fried chicken, all built around the same preparation: cut-up young birds, chilled, drained but left damp so the coating clings. The heat test is the part worth reading twice.
- The bread-crumb testFat that browns a crumb of bread in sixty seconds is somewhere in the region of 350-375F, though the test is only approximate. A thermometer gets you there faster and more reliably; too cool and the coating soaks fat, too hot and it colours before the joint cooks through.
- Ten to twelve minutesThat timing suits the small young birds of the period. Modern broiler-fryers run larger, so breast pieces will need 12-15 minutes and thighs and drumsticks closer to 15-18. Cook to 165F at the bone rather than by the clock.
- CriscoStill sold, though reformulated over the years and no longer the cottonseed product of 1913. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point behaves the same way here.
- Standing overnightThe original leaves the washed pieces to stand overnight in the refrigerator. Cover them, keep the refrigerator at or below 40F, and use the chicken within a day. Do not wash raw chicken under a running tap in a modern kitchen; the splash spreads bacteria across the sink and counter.
- "2 grains white pepper"An old apothecary-style measure of a very small quantity. Read it as a pinch.
- The batter in variant BOne cup flour to one and a half cups water plus two eggs gives a thin, crepe-like coating that fries lacy rather than crisp. If you want it to cling to a bare joint, hold back some of the water.
- Variant C is the useful oneThree tablespoons of fat, covered for ten minutes, then uncovered and browned, is a pan-fry finished with steam. Keep the lid off for the last stage or the crust will never set, and turn often so the flour does not scorch in the shallow fat.
- Draining"A folded napkin" is there to absorb fat; the hot platter keeps the pieces warm. Use a rack over a sheet pan; paper on a plate traps steam under the bottom crust.
- YieldOne frying chicken, cut up, serves three to four. The cornmeal dredge in variant D calls for a full tablespoon each of salt and black pepper against two cups of dry mix, which is aggressive by current taste; half that is closer to modern seasoning.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913 to teach American cooks what to do with a fat that had no precedent in their kitchens: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, solid at room temperature, cheaper than butter and shelf-stable in a way lard was not. The book's strategy was to take dishes everyone already knew and show Crisco slotted into the place lard or butter had held, which is why the fried chicken section reads as a straight catalogue of regional habits rather than anything new. Several entries are credited to Kate Brew Vaughn, a Los Angeles cookery writer and domestic-science teacher whose recipes P&G collected for the volume. The five variants together might be read as sketching something of the range of American frying practice at the time: deep-fried in a kettle, batter-dipped, pan-steamed under a lid with cream gravy, dredged in cornmeal and served with batter bread, and dressed with hot cream and roasted peanuts.