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Creamed Potatoes au Gratin
2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 tablespoonful flour 1 quart peeled and diced 1 cupful grated cheese potatoes 1 teaspoonful salt 2 cupfuls milk 1/4 teaspoonful white pepper Few breadcrumbs Cut potatoes in about 1/2-inch pieces, then boil carefully in boiling salted water. When done, drain, and pour into Criscoed fireproof dish. Blend Crisco and flour in saucepan over fire, add milk, stir till boiling, then add cheese and seasonings. Pour over potatoes; grate a little cheese over top, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and bake five minutes in hot oven. Vegetables
The ingredient list has been scrambled by the book's original two-column layout; read it as 2 tablespoons Crisco, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 quart peeled and diced potatoes, 1 cup grated cheese, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 cups milk, 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, and a few breadcrumbs.
- The hinge: undercook the potatoes slightlyA quart of half-inch dice will soften fast, and "boil carefully" is the recipe's warning against mush. Pull them when a knife meets slight resistance, around 6 to 8 minutes, since they finish in the hot sauce and oven.
- "Hot oven"Read this as roughly 400-450F. Five minutes at that heat sets the top but will not brown it; if you want colour, run the dish under the broiler for two or three minutes rather than extending the bake.
- CriscoThe all-vegetable shortening this book was written to promote, reformulated several times since 1913 and no longer made with cottonseed oil or partial hydrogenation. Butter is the natural substitute here and improves the sauce; current Crisco works if you want the period result.
- A quart of potatoesMeasured by volume after dicing, this is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of potatoes. Waxy or all-purpose varieties hold their shape better than russets in a cream sauce.
- The sauce is thin by designOne tablespoon of flour to two cups of milk gives a pouring consistency that soaks into the potatoes rather than coating them. If you prefer a thicker gratin, use two tablespoons of flour to the two tablespoons of fat.
- Cheese off the heatAdd the grated cheese after the white sauce has come to a boil and then been drawn back from the burner. Boiling cheese sauce turns grainy and weeps fat. An aged cheddar or a dry Cheshire suits the period; the book assumes a firm grating cheese, not processed slices.
- White pepperUsed for appearance, so the sauce stays unspeckled. Black pepper will do if that is what is on the shelf, though it tastes noticeably different.
- YieldServes four to six as a side. A quart of potatoes plus two cups of sauce comes to about 1 1/2 quarts, so use a 2-quart dish to leave some headroom.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was a promotional cookbook issued by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with an entirely new product: a solid white vegetable shortening sold in a can, launched in 1911 as a substitute for lard and butter. Many recipes in the book use the word twice, once as an ingredient and once as a verb, and "Criscoed fireproof dish" is a fair sample of the house style. The dish itself is older than the fat in it: gratins built on a flour-and-butter white sauce with grated cheese descend from French household cookery, and the phrase au gratin refers to the browned crust rather than to cheese specifically. "Fireproof dish" was a common term of the era for the ovenproof earthenware and glass then coming into home kitchens; Pyrex ovenware reached the American market in 1915, a couple of years after the book.