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May 13
Menu: Grilled Salmon; Cucumber; Potatoes; Galantine of Beef, Aspic Jelly; Vegetable Salad; Custard; Fruit Tart; Coffee; Spring Soup; Slices of Galantine of Beef; Lettuce and Egg Salad; Cheese Toast; Bananas in Custard; Coffee Spring Soup-1 large lettuce, 12 spring onions, 2 tablespoons Crisco, 1 pint milk, 1 pint stock or water, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, parsley, salt, nutmeg, croutons of bread and sugar. Wash lettuce and onions, shred lettuce and slice onions thinly. Melt Crisco in saucepan, and fry lettuce and onions for about 5 minutes; add stock and part of milk, and let simmer gently for 10 minutes. Mix cornstarch with remainder of milk, pour into soup and stir until it boils, simmer for another 10 minutes; season to taste with pepper, salt, sugar, and little nutmeg. Cut some crust of bread into thin strips and dry quite crisp in oven; put them into tureen with parsley picked small, and pour soup over. Watercress, endive, or sorrel may be used either along with, or in place of, the lettuce for a change. Fruit Tart-2 pounds fruit, 1 cup sugar, ginger, 2 cups flour, 6 tablespoons Crisco, and baking powder. If tart is to be made of rhubarb, it should we well washed (not skinned) and cut up in inch lengths, packed tightly into dish, sugar sprinkled among it, also 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger. If made of gooseberries, they should be picked clean, washed, and put in dish with little cinnamon. If apples are used, they must be peeled and sliced very thinly, sugar sprinkled among them, and little May 15 lemon peel grated, or 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon. In no case put water in. Paste. Put flour in basin with dessertspoon, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 6 tablespoons Crisco, and crumble latter among flour until all lumps have disappeared, then pour in cold water to make stiff paste; turn it out on board and Julienne Soup Bobotee Beans Boiled Potatoes Cream Cheese and Pimiento Salad Blanc-mange and Stewed Fruit Coffee Bobotee-1 pound lean beef or mutton, 6 ounces bread, 8 tablespoons Crisco, 4 onions, 4 tablespoons almonds, 1 tablespoon vinegar, 1 tablespoon curry powder, 1 tablespoon sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, and 4 eggs. Soak bread in milk, then squeeze it, mince meat. Chop onions and fry in hot Crisco, keeping them of a pale color, add bread, curry, sugar, vinegar, and salt, then well mix in meat and eggs beaten. Crisco a pudding dish. Bake from 20 to 30 minServe in pudding dish garnished with slices of lemon and parsley. Can be eaten either hot or cold. utes.
Two courses from a dated dinner in Crisco's promotional calendar: a lettuce soup thickened with cornstarch, and a deep-dish fruit tart. The tart entry breaks off mid-sentence, so the pastry needs finishing from general practice.
- Crisco and its substitutesCrisco here is plain hydrogenated vegetable shortening, used to prove it could replace butter and lard in every course. Butter is better in the soup; a solid shortening or cold butter works in the pastry, where the fat's firmness matters more than its flavour.
- Spring onionsTwelve spring onions means twelve whole scallions, white and pale green, not twelve bulb onions. Sliced thin, they soften into the lettuce rather than staying distinct.
- Don't let the lettuce brownThe five-minute fry is a sweat, not a saute. Keep the heat low and covered so the lettuce collapses and gives up its water; browned lettuce turns the finished soup grey-green and bitter.
- Cornstarch slurryMix the tablespoon of cornstarch into cold milk, add it off the boil, then bring it up while stirring. Once it thickens, the further ten minutes of simmering is to cook out the raw starch taste, so keep it at a bare tremble or the soup will thin again.
- Sugar and nutmegThe sugar is a seasoning in the amount of a pinch to half a teaspoon, balancing the slight bitterness of lettuce, not sweetening the soup. Grate the nutmeg fresh and use very little.
- Drying the breadThin strips of crust dried "quite crisp" want a slow oven; the recipe gives no temperature, so something in the region of 300F for 15-20 minutes, until dry through rather than coloured. The original puts them in the tureen and pours the soup over them; under hot soup they soften within a minute or two, so add them at the table if you want them crisp.
- Rhubarb leaves"Not skinned" refers to the stalks, which need no peeling. The leaves are high in oxalic acid and are not eaten; trim and discard them.
- The unfinished pastryThe text stops after "turn it out on board and". The book does not supply the rest, so it has to be filled in: roll it out, lay it over the packed fruit in a deep dish, seal and vent it, and bake in a hot oven -- somewhere around 400F -- until the crust is set and the juices bubble, likely 40-50 minutes. Two cups flour to six tablespoons fat, rubbed in until no lumps remain, gives a crumbly rather than a flaky crust.
- No added waterThe instruction is deliberate and worth keeping. Two pounds of rhubarb, gooseberries or apples with a cup of sugar release plenty of liquid; adding water floods the dish and softens the underside of the crust.
- YieldThe soup makes about two pints, enough for four as a first course, six at a stretch. The tart, made in a deep dish, will serve about six.
Lettuce soup belongs to an older kitchen logic in which lettuce was a cooked vegetable as often as a salad, and a spring glut of it had to be used. Recipes of this kind run through British and American household books of the nineteenth century, and the suggested swaps here — watercress, endive, sorrel — are all sharp-tasting spring greens that came in at the same season. What is new here is the fat. The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble to introduce hydrogenated cottonseed oil to cooks who had always reached for butter or lard, and the firm's promotional cookery, the "Calendar of Dinners" menus among it, set out a full year of dinners in which Crisco appears in the soup pot, the pastry and the frying pan alike. The point of printing a lettuce soup and a fruit tart on the same page was to show the product crossing from savoury to sweet without carrying a taste with it — the neutrality that was, and remains, shortening's chief selling point.
A South African bobotie adapted for a Crisco-era American kitchen. The method is sound, but the ingredient list and the instructions do not quite match, so read both before you start.
- CriscoPlain hydrogenated vegetable shortening, and the book's whole reason for existing. Any neutral solid fat or oil works; for the onions use about 4 tablespoons of oil or butter and reserve the rest for greasing the dish.
- The milkMilk appears in the method but not in the ingredient list. Allow about a cup to soak the 6 ounces of bread, then squeeze it out as directed so the mixture is moist rather than wet.
- BreadSix ounces is roughly five or six slices of firm white bread, crusts and all. Stale bread absorbs better than fresh.
- AlmondsFour tablespoons means blanched almonds, chopped or slivered. They are a traditional element in bobotie and should be stirred in with the meat, though the original never says when to add them.
- Onions kept paleThe instruction to keep them "of a pale color" matters. Browned onions push the dish toward a meatloaf flavour; softened translucent onions let the curry and the sweet-sour note come forward.
- Oven and timingThe original gives no oven temperature; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits. The stated twenty to thirty minutes will only serve for a shallow dish, and a deeper pudding dish holding this much mixture is likely to need considerably longer. Go by an internal temperature of 160F.
- Curry powderCommercial curry powders of this period were generally mild and turmeric-forward. Taste yours and adjust; the sugar and vinegar are there to balance it.
- YieldAbout six servings. The recipe notes it can be eaten either hot or cold; it slices more neatly cold.
Bobotie is a Cape Malay dish from South Africa, built on spiced minced meat bound with bread soaked in milk, sweetened slightly and sharpened with vinegar or lemon, and usually finished with a savoury custard top. Its ancestry is generally traced to the cooking of enslaved and free people of Malay and Indonesian descent in the Cape, and the sweet-sour-spiced combination is characteristic of that kitchen. Crisco's promotional cookbooks drew on dishes from a range of cuisines, presenting the new shortening as a stand-in for butter, lard, or drippings; the 'May 16' heading here points to a day-by-day dinner calendar format. The version here has lost the baked egg custard topping of the standard dish, folding all four eggs into the meat instead, which makes it closer to a spiced meat pudding.