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November 21
Menu: Baked Boned White Fish; Bread Dressing, Drawn Butter Sauce; Stewed Tomatoes; Mashed Potatoes; Date Pudding; Coffee Date Pudding-Clean, stone, and chop 1 pound dates, add 1 cup English walnut meats, broken in pieces, 1/2 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Beat up 4 egg whites to stiff froth, then fold in 1/2 cup sugar, add beaten egg yolks, 1/2 tablespoon melted Crisco and date mixture. Turn into Criscoed tin and bake in moderate oven 30 minutes. Cut in squares and serve cold with whipped cream.
A flourless-in-spirit date and walnut bar, closer to a torte than a steamed pudding despite the name. It comes from a Crisco promotional cookbook, so the shortening is the point; butter or any neutral solid shortening works identically here.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F (period "moderate" runs about 350-375F). Thirty minutes suits a shallow pan; the top should be dry and springy with no wet centre.
- Pan sizeNo tin is specified. An 8x8-inch square pan gives a bar about an inch thick, which is what "cut in squares" implies. A 9x13 will give thin bars and will be done sooner; start checking well before the thirty minutes are up.
- "Clean, stone"Stone means pit. A pound of whole dates yields roughly 14 oz once pitted, about 2 1/2 cups chopped. Pre-pitted dates work; if they are dry and hard, steep them in hot water for ten minutes and drain well.
- English walnutsThese are ordinary walnuts, as opposed to the American black walnut, which was still common in home kitchens and is far more assertive. Use standard walnut halves, broken by hand rather than chopped fine.
- Order of mixingThe instruction is oddly sequenced: beat the whites stiff, fold in the sugar, then add the yolks, the melted Crisco and the floured date-nut mixture. Toss the dates and nuts with the flour, baking powder and salt first so they separate, then fold everything in with as few strokes as possible. The whites do most of the lifting, with the teaspoon of baking powder behind them.
- Melted shorteningHalf a tablespoon is a trace of fat, for tenderness rather than richness, and the batter works as written. Let it cool to barely warm before it goes in or it will deflate the whites.
- ServingAn 8-inch pan cuts into 16 squares, enough for six to eight people. The recipe calls for it cold, and the crumb firms as it cools.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, which had introduced Crisco in 1911 as the first widely marketed hydrogenated vegetable shortening, and the book's job was to prove the new fat could do everything butter and lard did. The "Calendar of Dinners" section that this page belongs to supplied a menu for every day of the year, which is why a stray line for November 22's fried smelts sits at the foot of the pudding. Date-and-walnut bakes of this kind drew on dates that, at this date, were still largely an imported item: commercial date palm cultivation in the Coachella Valley had begun only in the first decade of the century, using offshoots imported from North Africa and the Middle East, and California production remained small. Calling a pan of squares a "pudding" reflects the loose use of the word for a sweet dish served at the end of a meal, rather than specifically a boiled or steamed one.