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April 7
Menu: Grilled Brook Trout; Spring Lamb Steak, a la Minute; Lentil Croquettes; Potato Rissoles; Grapefruit Salad; Cheese; Crackers; Golden Parfait; Coffee Spring Lamb Steak, a la Minute-Rub some fillets of spring lamb steak with salt and pepper, and fry them gently in 3 tablespoons Crisco which has been melted in an iron frying pan, until thoroughly cooked. Remove from frying pan and keep hot. Put 12 large fresh mushroom caps in pan and cook until tender, adding 14 serve. Corn Chowder Broiled Steak Baked Potatoes Horseradish, Cream Dressing Scalloped Tomatoes Celery Salad Cherry Sponge Coffee Corn Chowder-1 can corn, 1 cup salt pork cut in cubes, 1 cup potatoes, 1/2 cup chopped onions, salt and red pepper to taste, 3 cups water, 2 cups milk, 1 tablespoon Crisco, 1 tablespoon flour, and 1/2 cup crackercrumbs. Cook salt pork in frying pan for 5 minutes; add onion and cook until a yellow color. Parboil potatoes 5 minutes; add to onion with corn and water; cook 20 minutes. Thicken milk with Crisco and flour cooked together. Combine mixtures; add crackercrumbs and salt and pepper to taste, then serve.
A straightforward salt-pork chowder from the day-by-day dinner calendar at the back of The Story of Crisco. Two things need attention: the vague can and cup measures, and the point at which the milk goes in.
- The hinge: add the milk last, off a hard boilThe white sauce (Crisco and flour cooked together, then milk) is combined with the pork-and-potato base at the end. Keep it below a simmer once combined or the milk will catch on the bottom and scorch, and the flour will loosen its grip.
- "1 can corn"In 1913 this probably meant something close to a No. 2 can, around 20 oz; the nearest common modern can is 15 oz. Canned corn of the period came both cream style and whole kernel, and the recipe does not say which; cream style will give a thicker result.
- Cups as volume, not weightThe potatoes and salt pork are measured diced, by the cup: figure about 6 oz of potato (one medium, in 1/2-inch dice) and 5-6 oz of salt pork. Cut the pork small so it renders properly in five minutes.
- CriscoPlain vegetable shortening. Butter or oil substitutes one for one here; the roux is only a tablespoon each of fat and flour, so the choice is about flavor, not structure.
- Red pepperCayenne, in the pinch range rather than the teaspoon range. Not paprika and not crushed chile flakes.
- Cracker crumbsCoarsely crushed soda crackers or saltines, about 1/2 cup. They thicken as they sit, so add them just before serving unless you want a nearly spoon-standing chowder.
- SaltSeason only at the end. Salt pork and cracker crumbs both carry a good deal, and the recipe's "to taste" is doing real work.
- YieldAbout five cups of liquid plus solids, which serves four generously as a first course or three as a supper.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913 to explain a genuinely new product: a hydrogenated cottonseed oil shortening that behaved like lard but came from a plant, and so could be sold to cooks who kept kosher kitchens or who distrusted the butcher's rendering. The book's "Calendar of Dinners" assigned a full menu to every day of the year, and this chowder is the April 10 entry. Corn chowder itself is much older than Crisco and belongs to the New England tradition of pork-fat-and-milk chowders, in which salt pork is rendered first and the drippings carry everything that follows; the word chowder is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron. What marks the recipe as an advertisement is the single tablespoon of Crisco in the white sauce, doing a job butter had always done, in a dish whose flavor still comes almost entirely from cured pork.
A straightforward salt-pork chowder from the day-by-day dinner calendar at the back of The Story of Crisco. Two things need attention: the vague can and cup measures, and the point at which the milk goes in.
- The hinge: add the milk last, off a hard boilThe white sauce (Crisco and flour cooked together, then milk) is combined with the pork-and-potato base at the end. Keep it below a simmer once combined or the milk will catch on the bottom and scorch, and the flour will loosen its grip.
- "1 can corn"In 1913 this probably meant something close to a No. 2 can, around 20 oz; the nearest common modern can is 15 oz. Canned corn of the period came both cream style and whole kernel, and the recipe does not say which; cream style will give a thicker result.
- Cups as volume, not weightThe potatoes and salt pork are measured diced, by the cup: figure about 6 oz of potato (one medium, in 1/2-inch dice) and 5-6 oz of salt pork. Cut the pork small so it renders properly in five minutes.
- CriscoPlain vegetable shortening. Butter or oil substitutes one for one here; the roux is only a tablespoon each of fat and flour, so the choice is about flavor, not structure.
- Red pepperCayenne, in the pinch range rather than the teaspoon range. Not paprika and not crushed chile flakes.
- Cracker crumbsCoarsely crushed soda crackers or saltines, about 1/2 cup. They thicken as they sit, so add them just before serving unless you want a nearly spoon-standing chowder.
- SaltSeason only at the end. Salt pork and cracker crumbs both carry a good deal, and the recipe's "to taste" is doing real work.
- YieldAbout five cups of liquid plus solids, which serves four generously as a first course or three as a supper.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913 to explain a genuinely new product: a hydrogenated cottonseed oil shortening that behaved like lard but came from a plant, and so could be sold to cooks who kept kosher kitchens or who distrusted the butcher's rendering. The book's "Calendar of Dinners" assigned a full menu to every day of the year, and this chowder is the April 10 entry. Corn chowder itself is much older than Crisco and belongs to the New England tradition of pork-fat-and-milk chowders, in which salt pork is rendered first and the drippings carry everything that follows; the word chowder is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron. What marks the recipe as an advertisement is the single tablespoon of Crisco in the white sauce, doing a job butter had always done, in a dish whose flavor still comes almost entirely from cured pork.