Fruit Rolls
1/8 lb. chopped candied citron peel 1½ cupful chopped English walnut meats 1 cupful milk 1 yeast cake 1/4 cupful lukewarm water 1/4 cupful sugar ½ cupful currants 1/4 cupful melted Crisco 2 teaspoonfuls salt 2 eggs ½ cupful chopped cocoanut ½ cupful sultana raisins ½ teaspoonful powdered cinnamon ½ teaspoonful powdered mace Flour Scald milk, when lukewarm add yeast cake dissolved in tepid water and 1/2 cupfuls flour, beat well, cover and let rise till light. Add sugar, salt, eggs well beaten, Crisco and enough flour to knead; knead, let rise again. Roll out one-eighth inch thick, spread with melted Crisco, sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and mace, fruit and nuts; roll like jelly roll and cut in one inch pieces. Place pieces in Criscoed pan, let rise, brush over with melted Crisco, and bake in hot oven twenty minutes.
Sufficient for sixteen rolls.
X 2 cupfuls molasses 1 cupful brown sugar
A sweet yeast dough rolled with dried fruit and spice, from Procter & Gamble's 1913 promotional cookbook. The ingredient list is generous with fruit and vague about flour, so the dough is built by feel.
- Ignore the last line"X 2 cupfuls molasses 1 cupful brown sugar" belongs to the next recipe in the book and has bled into this one. It is not part of the fruit rolls.
- Yeast cakeOne 1913 compressed yeast cake is replaced by one packet of active dry or instant yeast, about 2¼ teaspoons. Dissolve it in the quarter cup of lukewarm water as written; the milk must be cooled to lukewarm before it meets the yeast.
- Flour, unmeasuredThe sponge quantity prints as "1/2 cupfuls flour," almost certainly 1½ cupfuls; the rest is "enough flour to knead." Expect roughly 4 to 4½ cups total for a soft, slightly tacky enriched dough. Add the last cup gradually — too much flour and the rolls bake dry.
- Crisco and its substitutesThe melted Crisco is shortening, and butter works in its place for better flavour at the same volume. The original's whole purpose was to show that vegetable shortening could do what butter and lard did.
- CocoanutPeriod recipes may mean either freshly grated coconut or packaged dried shredded coconut; unsweetened dried shredded is the practical modern choice. Modern sweetened flaked coconut will make the filling noticeably sweeter; reduce the sprinkled sugar if you use it.
- Citron peelCandied citron is still sold at holiday season and by baking suppliers. Candied orange or lemon peel substitutes directly by weight — 1/8 lb is about 2 ounces, a scant third of a cup chopped.
- Oven temperatureA "hot oven" in cookbooks of this period is generally reckoned somewhere around 425 to 450F, which risks scorching a sugar-and-fruit filling before the centre sets. Bake these at 375 to 400F, and check at fifteen minutes; the exposed fruit and coconut darken fast.
- The hingeRoll the dough to an even eighth of an inch and no thicker, or the one-inch slices will be all bread and little filling. Slice with a serrated knife or a length of thread to avoid crushing the spiral.
- Yield and timingSixteen rolls, as stated, spaced in a greased pan so they touch as they rise. Allow two hours for the sponge and first rise plus about 45 minutes for the shaped rolls; this is a three-to-four-hour project, not a morning quick bread.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written to teach American cooks what to do with an unfamiliar product: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold as a solid white fat that behaved like lard but came from a plant. Recipes like this one exist to prove versatility: Crisco greases the pan, spreads the filling and glazes the top, several jobs in a single roll. The rolls themselves are squarely in the northern European tradition of enriched, spiced, fruit-studded yeast bread, kin to the fruit breads that German and Scandinavian immigrant bakers brought to American kitchens, and the combination of currants, sultanas, citron and mace was standard festive-baking vocabulary at the time. Mace, the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, has largely fallen out of everyday American use since.