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January 22
Menu: Filleted Anchovies with Lemon; Celery; Ripe Olives; Salted Pistachio Nuts; Consomme, a la Royale; Halibut Turbans; Roast Goose, Apple Jelly; Potato Puff; Mashed Turnip; Endive and Roquefort Cheese Salad; Coupe St. Jacques Coffee; per. Halibut Turbans - Have 4 slices halibut cut 1/2 an inch thick; remove skin and bone, thus securing 16 fillets. Dip in melted Crisco; squeeze over juice of 1 lemon, little onion juice and sprinkle with salt and pepCommencing with the widest end, roll each fillet into a "turban" and fasten by running through each Criscoed wooden skewer. Bake 20 minutes, basting with hot stock, or Crisco melted in hot water. Arrange crown shape on serving dish. Fill the center with boiled potato-balls, dressed with salt, Crisco, and chopped parsley. Serve with Hollandaise sauce.
The text is a fragment of a printed dinner menu, so the halibut instructions run straight out of the tail of the previous course. Read past the stray "Coupe St. Jacques" and "Endive and Roquefort" headings and what remains is a workable baked fish dish.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was normal in 1913. Twenty minutes for half-inch fillets rolled into turbans points to a moderate oven, about 375F; the rolls are done when the fish flakes at the center, around 145F.
- CriscoThe book exists to sell it, so it appears in every line. Crisco here is simply a neutral solid shortening for dipping and basting; melted butter or a mild oil does the same work, and the "Crisco melted in hot water" baste is just a thin fat-and-water liquid to keep the surface from drying.
- Cutting the filletsFour half-inch halibut steaks yielding sixteen fillets means each boned steak is divided into four strips, one from each quarter around the bone. Buy about 2 lb of halibut fillet and cut it into sixteen strips roughly 1 inch wide if steaks are not available.
- SkewersWooden skewers should be soaked before use, or use toothpicks for pieces this small. Cut them flush so the turbans sit upright in the crown arrangement.
- Onion juiceA period seasoning: grate an onion and press the pulp through a sieve, or press a cut half against a coarse grater. A teaspoon is plenty against one lemon's juice for sixteen small fillets.
- Hot stock for bastingThe recipe does not say what kind; fish stock, or the trimmings simmered with an onion, would suit. Basting twice during the bake is enough; more washes off the lemon and seasoning.
- Potato ballsCut with a large melon baller from peeled boiling potatoes, then simmer until just tender. They are meant to be uniform and small enough to heap in the center of the fish crown.
- YieldFour servings of four turbans each, as a main course in a menu that already carries several courses. With the potatoes and hollandaise it will feed four generously.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was Procter & Gamble's promotional cookbook for a genuinely new product: a hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening that behaved like lard but kept without refrigeration and had no animal origin, which the company advertised to kosher and vegetarian households as well as to general cooks. The "Calendar of Dinners" section supplied a full menu for every day of the year, a common device in early twentieth-century cookbooks meant to relieve the housekeeper of daily planning, and it let the publisher work the product into fish, pastry, vegetables and frying alike. Turban is an old kitchen term for any fillet rolled or coiled into a ring, generally traced to French service, where turban de filets de sole and its relations were arranged crown-fashion around a garnished center. Halibut was then sold in thick steaks, which is why the recipe assumes them rather than fillets.