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December 29
Menu: Vegetarian; Nut Turkey Roast, Cranberry Jelly; Creamed Onions; Baked Potatoes; Hubbard Squash; Pineapple and Orange Salad; Pastry Fingers; Lalla Rookh; Coffee Pastry Fingers-Sift 1/2 cup pastry flour, 2 cups entire wheat flour, and 1 teaspoon salt into basin, add 3 tablespoons Crisco, and 1/2 cup butter, cut them into flours with knife until finely divided. Then rub in fine with finger tips and make into stiff paste with cold water. Roll out 14 inch in thickness, cut in finger shape pieces, lay on Criscoed tins and bake from 7 to 10 minutes in hot oven. Cool, brush over with slightly beaten egg white, and sprinkle with salted pine nuts. Return to oven to brown nut meats.
A plain short-crust cut into strips and finished with egg white and salted pine nuts — a savoury biscuit for serving with coffee or at the end of a meal. The dough is stiff and low in liquid, so it wants a light hand.
- ThicknessThe dough should be rolled about a quarter inch thick; the figure in the original text has lost its fraction. Thinner than that and the fingers snap; much thicker and the seven-to-ten-minute bake leaves them pale in the middle.
- Hot ovenUsually taken to mean somewhere around 425-450F. At that heat the stated 7 to 10 minutes suits quarter-inch strips — watch from minute six, as entire wheat flour browns faster than white.
- Entire wheat flourThis is what we now call whole wheat flour. Whole wheat absorbs water readily, so add the cold water a tablespoon at a time and stop as soon as the dough coheres.
- Crisco and butter togetherThe book is selling shortening, but the pairing is sound baking: the Crisco gives tenderness and the butter gives flavour and browning. Any solid vegetable shortening works in place of Crisco; keep both fats cold while you cut and rub them in.
- Rubbing inCutting with a knife first and only then finishing with the fingertips keeps the fats from melting. If the kitchen is warm, chill the bowl and work fast — overworked whole wheat pastry turns leathery rather than crumbly.
- The second bakeThe egg-white glaze and nuts go on after the fingers have cooled, then back into the oven only long enough to set the glaze and colour the pine nuts, two to four minutes. Pine nuts hold a great deal of oil and go from golden to bitter quickly.
- Salted pine nutsSalted nuts of various kinds were a common table item in this period. Untoasted pine nuts tossed in a little fine salt work; skip any pre-toasting, since the finishing bake will do it.
- Yield and keepingYield depends entirely on how long you cut the fingers. They keep a few days in a tin, and crisp again in a moderate oven for a few minutes.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a solid, shelf-stable, wholly vegetable shortening — though earlier compound shortenings had already been sold in the United States. "A Calendar of Dinners," a separate Crisco cookbook, gave a menu for every day of the year. The recipe is an example of the book's habit of using Crisco alongside butter rather than in place of it. Pine nuts and whole wheat pastry both suggest the slightly self-conscious refinement of the era's company cooking.