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January 28
Menu: Croutes, a la Marie; Oyster Balls, Horseradish Sauce; Potato Souffle; Baked Cucumbers; Nut and Celery Salad; Chocolate Bavarian Cream; Coffee Croutes, a la Marie-Pass 1 small tureen foie gras through fine wire sieve. Put in basin, add 1 teaspoon Crisco, pepper and salt to taste, and then stir in gently 12 a gill cream. Pipe with a star tube on to round croute of short crust; garnish with pimientoes cut in strips and whipped cream.
A savoury canapé from the book's day-by-day dinner calendar, printed in the compressed telegraphic style those calendars used. The mixture is essentially a foie gras mousse piped on pastry, and it stands or falls on temperature: the seasoned purée must be cold and stiff enough to hold a star, but not so cold it tears coming through the tube.
- "1 small tureen foie gras"A terrine, i.e. one small tin or crock of prepared foie gras, roughly 4 to 8 oz. Any smooth tinned pâté de foie gras or mousse de foie works; whole lobes are not what is meant here.
- "12 a gill"A misprint for 1/2 a gill. In this American book a gill is 1/2 cup (4 fl oz), so half a gill is about 1/4 cup, or 4 tablespoons, of cream. Add it a little at a time and stop when the mixture will still hold a piped ridge.
- Croûtes of short crustCroûtes of short crust -- Small rounds of plain shortcrust, baked until dry and pale gold. They must be completely cold, or the mousse slumps.
- The teaspoon of CriscoIt is there as a soft, neutral fat to smooth the purée and help it pipe, which is the whole point of the book. Softened butter does the same job and tastes better with liver.
- SievingPressing the foie gras through a fine wire sieve is not optional decoration work; it removes fibre and gristle so the mixture will pass a star tube without clogging. A food processor plus a sieve is faster.
- PimientoesCanned sweet red peppers, drained and blotted dry before cutting into narrow strips, or they bleed pink into the cream.
- Whipped creamUnsweetened, whipped just to firm peaks, and piped on within a few minutes of serving. Assembled early, the croûtes go soft and the cream weeps.
- Yield and serviceA small tin of foie gras will dress roughly a dozen small croûtes, depending on the size of the tin, enough for a few people as a savoury or with drinks. Serve cold, on the day they are made.
The Story of Crisco (1913), compiled by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, was published two years after Crisco itself reached the market, and its long "Calendar of Dinners" exists to show that the new all-vegetable shortening could stand in for butter and lard anywhere in a fashionable menu, including the French-styled courses. Croûtes like these belong to the Edwardian savoury tradition: a small, salty, highly worked mouthful served near the end of dinner, at a period when English and American formal dining still followed French kitchen vocabulary closely. A garnish name of the "à la Marie" type seems to be used loosely here rather than as a fixed classical formula, and tinned pâté de foie gras, imported and expensive, was exactly the sort of luxury a 1913 hostess bought ready-made and simply lightened, seasoned and piped.