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July 11
Menu: Roast Beef; Yorkshire Pudding; Potato Croquettes; String Beans; Lettuce, French Dressing; Fruit Pancakes; Coffee; Cherry Souffle-4 tablespoons flour,; 2 tablespoons Crisco, 1/2 cup milk,; 1 teaspoon vanilla, 3 whole eggs and; 1 additional white, 4 tablespoons; sugar, and 4 tablespoons chopped; preserved cherries. Fruit Pancakes-2 cups flour, 2 cups milk, 2 tablespoons Crisco, 2 eggs, nutmeg and salt to taste. Put flour into basin with salt, grated nutmeg, eggs, pour milk in by degrees, stirring smoothly; beat it well in order to let the air in, and then let it stand for 1/2 an hour. This allows starch grains in flour to swell, and so batter is lighter. When ready to fry, warm Crisco and pour in, stirring at same time. Make some Crisco hot in a small saucepan, ladle some into a frying pan, when very hot, pour back into saucepan, but do not drain it, then ladle sufficient batter in to cover the bottom of pan, shake it gently over rather a sharp fire, and, when nicely browned, toss it over and brown other side, turn on to a wire or sieve, sprinkle with sugar and ripe blackberries. Roll it up, and keep it warm while finishing remainder of batter. Dish them up on platter, each row crossways to prevent under ones from becoming sodden. Sprinkle sugar over top and serve.
Two dishes run together here: a cherry soufflé given as an ingredient list only, and a set of thin fruit pancakes with full instructions. The pancake method is the usable part of the page.
- The soufflé has no methodOnly quantities are printed, on the assumption that the reader already knows how to build a soufflé. The proportions suggest a flour-and-fat panada: cook the Crisco and flour together, add the milk to make a thick paste, beat in the yolks, sugar, vanilla and cherries, then fold in the four stiff whites (three yolks, four whites, as printed). No oven setting or baking time is given on the page, so any figure would be a modern guess.
- Crisco and substitutionsCrisco was a new all-vegetable hydrogenated shortening when this book was written, and the whole volume exists to sell it. Modern shortening, butter or a neutral oil all work in both recipes; for the pancakes, oil is the easier choice.
- Rest the batterThe half-hour stand is not optional padding. It hydrates the flour and relaxes the gluten, and the batter fries thinner and more tender for it. An hour, or overnight in the refrigerator, is better still.
- The odd frying trickHeating fat in a saucepan, swirling it round the pan and pouring most of it back leaves the thin film these crepe-like pancakes need. It is a sensible way to keep a consistent, barely greased surface across a dozen pancakes; a paper towel wiped over the pan does the same job.
- "Rather a sharp fire"Medium-high heat. The pan wants to be hot enough that the batter sets on contact, or it soaks up fat and turns heavy.
- The cherries"Preserved cherries" in this period could mean either cherries put up in heavy syrup or candied fruit; it is not the modern jarred maraschino. Drain and chop them well, and pat them dry, or the wet fruit will weigh down the whites.
- Stacking crosswaysLaying each rolled pancake at right angles to the one beneath keeps steam from collecting and softening the lower layer. Worth doing, and it holds the plate together while you finish the batch.
- YieldThe soufflé quantities are small, enough for perhaps two to four in one dish. The pancake batter, at two cups each of flour and milk, should give a dozen or more thin pancakes in a 9-inch pan.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in the early 1910s, shortly after the company introduced hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, and the recipes were compiled by Marion Harris Neil, then cookery editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. The book is arranged partly as "A Calendar of Dinners," a menu for every day of the year, so an entry dated July 12 is a day's suggestion rather than a standalone recipe page — which is why the soufflé arrives as bare quantities and the pancakes as fully written method. The pancake recipe itself is older than Crisco and plainly English in style: thin, rolled, sugared and filled with whatever fruit the season offered, blackberries here for midsummer. What the promotional context supplies is the substitution argument, that a vegetable shortening could stand in for the butter or lard such batters had always used, with a longer shelf life in a household without reliable refrigeration.