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April 22
Menu: Vegetarian; Calcutta Bisque; Tomatoes Casino; Asparagus Loaf, Bechamel Sauce; Leeks in Butter; Cheese; Roast Potatoes; Cherry Salad; Crackers; Coffee Asparagus Loaf-Crisco thoroughly a charlotte russe mold, 14 size, and line it with cooked tips of asparagus well drained. Cook together 2 tablespoons flour 2 tablespoons Crisco, 1 teaspoon salt, dash of pepper, add gradually 1 cup of cream and boil 5 minutes. Remove from fire, add 1 cup cooked asparagus tips and 4 eggs thoroughly beaten. Turn mixture into mold, set in pan of hot water and cook in a moderate about 30 minutes until center is firm. Turn loaf on hot dish, arrange about it, little oblong pieces of bread that have been dipped in oven or beaten eggs and milk and browned. Pour sauce around it and serve at once.
A baked asparagus custard turned out of a mold — essentially a savory timbale, thickened with a roux and set with whole eggs. It stands or falls on the water bath and on not overcooking the custard.
- CriscoStraight vegetable shortening, still sold under the same name though reformulated over the years. Butter works in the roux and for greasing the mold with no loss.
- The moldA charlotte russe mold is a plain, slightly tapered cylinder. Anything of about 1 quart capacity will do — a souffle dish, a small loaf pan, or a ring mold — buttered heavily and, for insurance, lined on the bottom with a round of parchment.
- Oven heatA moderate oven is around 350-375F. The custard is done when the center is just firm to a light touch and a knife inserted off-center comes out clean; 30 minutes suits a mold of about a quart, but start checking at 25.
- The water bathThe pan of hot water is not optional. It keeps the egg mixture below the point where it curdles and weeps; fill it to roughly halfway up the mold and use water that is already hot when it goes into the oven.
- Boiling the sauceFive minutes of boiling for a cup of cream with two tablespoons of flour is longer than needed and risks scorching. Two to three minutes at a bare simmer, stirring, cooks out the raw flour taste; let it cool slightly before the eggs go in so they do not scramble.
- AsparagusTips for the lining should be cooked until just tender and drained very dry — wet asparagus makes the custard weep. Arrange them tips-down against the sides so the pattern shows when the loaf is unmolded.
- The bread garnishThe croutons are dipped in beaten egg and milk and browned in fat, essentially small savory French toast fingers. Fry them while the loaf rests so they stay crisp.
- Unmolding and yieldLet the loaf stand about 5 minutes out of the water bath, run a thin knife around the edge, then invert onto a warmed platter. Serves roughly four to six as a first course. No sauce is specified; a plain cream sauce is the likeliest choice, with hollandaise another possibility.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was Procter & Gamble's book-length advertisement for hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and its "Calendar of Dinners" gave a dated menu for every day of the year so a housekeeper could cook from it without deciding anything. Whether an asparagus loaf on April 23 was a seasonal choice for that date we cannot say — the page gives only the date — though asparagus was one of the first field crops of the northern spring, and a molded, unmolded, sauced vegetable dish was exactly the sort of thing that signaled a careful table in the 1910s. Timbales and loaves of this kind, vegetable or fish bound with a roux and eggs and baked in a bain-marie, came by way of the cooking schools, and appear in numbers in the household manuals of the period.