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Potato and Pimiento Salad
1 tablespoonful Crisco 4 potatoes 2 hard-cooked eggs 1½ can pimientoes 1 tablespoonful chopped cucumber pickle 1 teaspoonful salt
The original gives quantities only, with no method at all — typical of the shorter entries in The Story of Crisco, where the assembly of a plain salad was assumed knowledge. A few of the measures need translating before you can work from it.
- No method givenBoil the potatoes in their skins until tender, peel and dice while still warm, then dress them so they absorb the seasoning. Fold in the chopped eggs, drained pimiento strips and pickle last so they do not break down.
- "1½ can pimientoes"This is genuinely ambiguous; canned pimientos of the period were sold in small tins, commonly around 4 oz, so one and a half cans is perhaps 5 to 6 oz drained. A 7 oz jar of roasted red peppers, drained and sliced, is a practical equivalent.
- One tablespoon of CriscoCrisco is solid at room temperature and will set into flecks on cold potatoes. Melt it and toss it through the potatoes while they are still hot, or substitute a neutral oil, which is what the fat is doing here.
- This is not a mayonnaise saladThere is no vinegar, lemon or dressing in the list — only fat, salt and the acidity carried by the pickle and the pimiento. A tablespoon of the pickle liquid or cider vinegar brings it into line with modern expectations without changing its character.
- Cucumber pickleIn 1913 this means a sweet or sour cucumber pickle from a crock or jar, chopped fine. Ordinary dill or bread-and-butter pickle works; keep the chop small so it seasons rather than intrudes.
- Potato choiceFour medium potatoes is roughly 1½ lb. Waxy varieties hold their dice; a floury baking potato will collapse into mash as you fold.
- YieldAbout four side servings. Serve at cool room temperature rather than straight from the refrigerator, where the fat firms and the flavour flattens.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913 to introduce American cooks to hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and its recipes exist chiefly to demonstrate that the new fat could stand in for lard, butter and salad oil alike. That explains the odd tablespoon of shortening in a potato salad: the book was making the case that Crisco belonged in every part of the meal, including the cold dishes where an oil would be expected. Canned pimientos were themselves a fairly new convenience at the time, grown and packed in quantity in the American South in the early twentieth century after Spanish sweet-pepper seed was brought over, and they turn up constantly in cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s as a cheap way to bring colour to pale food — potato salad, macaroni, cream cheese sandwiches. The recipe's bareness is also of its period: a competent household cook was given proportions and trusted to know what to do with a boiled potato.