Fig Cake
1 cupful sugar 3 eggs 1 cupful milk 2 teaspoonfuls powdered cinnamon 3 cupfuls flour ½ cupful Crisco 3 teaspoonfuls baking powder ½ teaspoonful salt 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoonful grated nutmeg 1 cupful shredded figs Wash and dry figs then shred them. Cream Crisco and sugar together, add eggs well beaten, and beat five minutes. Sift dry ingredients, and add to first mixture alternately with milk. Add figs and flavorings and turn into Criscoed and floured cake tin. Bake one hour in moderate oven. Sufficient for one small cake.
A plain butter-style cake from Procter & Gamble's own promotional cookbook, built to show off shortening. Two of the printed quantities look like typesetting errors and need judgment before you start.
- The fat quantity is suspect1 1/2 cupfuls of shortening against 3 cupfuls of flour would give a greasy, collapsing batter, and the singular "cupful" hints that a stray 1 has crept in before a 1/2. Half a cupful is the more likely intention; the printed figure should not be taken at face value without testing.
- The salt quantity too1 1/2 teaspoonfuls of salt in a small sweet cake is out of proportion, and again the singular "teaspoonful" suggests 1/2 was meant. Treat the printed amount as an error of the same kind.
- The stray line at the end"3/4 cupful flour" appears after the instructions with no home in them. In cakes of this period a little extra flour is tossed with the cut fruit so it does not sink; that is the likely purpose, though the text never says so.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. One hour is right for a deep tin; check at 45 minutes with a skewer if you are using anything shallow.
- CriscoStill sold, though reformulated more than once since 1913 — the original was hydrogenated cottonseed oil. Any modern vegetable shortening behaves the same way here; butter will give a firmer crumb and more flavour.
- FigsDried figs, not fresh. "Shred" means slice into thin strips with a knife or scissors -- sticky work, and oiled scissors help. The washing and drying presumably dealt with dust or grit picked up by loose-sold dried fruit.
- "Criscoed and floured"Grease and flour the tin. "One small cake" is vague; a batter with 3 cupfuls of flour will suit a 9-inch round or a 9x5 loaf.
- The five-minute beatingThat was for a hand or a slow crank mixer. Two to three minutes on medium with a stand mixer gets the same aeration; longer risks a tough crumb once the flour goes in.
The Story of Crisco (1913), written for Procter & Gamble by Marion Harris Neil, was published two years after Crisco itself came to market in 1911 as the first widely sold hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Its purpose was frankly commercial: to show housekeepers that a cottonseed-oil product could stand in for both butter and lard in every department of cookery, which is why the verb "Criscoed" appears where any other book would say "greased." A fig cake was a sensible thing to include. Dried figs shipped and kept well, came cheap by the barrel or box, and gave a plain spiced batter the fruited richness that a Christmas or company cake was expected to have without the expense of candied peel or a long-steamed pudding. The recipe's structure — creamed fat and sugar, eggs, dry ingredients alternated with milk — is the standard American butter-cake method of the period, applied here to demonstrate that the new fat creamed as obligingly as the old ones.