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July 20
Menu: Roast Beef's Heart; Boiled New Potatoes; Cauliflower au Gratin; Baked Bean Salad; Cheese Aigrettes; Apricot Meringue Pie; Coffee Cheese Aigrettes-Bring 2 tablespoons Crisco and 1/2 cup water to boiling point, then add 1/2 cup flour and stir until mixture leaves sides of pan. Cool, but do not allow to become cold, then add 2 eggs, 1 Vegetable Soup Fried Fish Baked Shoulder of Mutton Onion Puree by 1, 4 tablespoons grated cheese, July 23 salt, pepper, and paprika to taste and beat well. Allow to stand in cool place 30 minutes. Drop by teaspoons into hot Crisco and fry a golden brown. Drain and sprinkle with grated cheese. Serve hot. The Crisco should not be too hot or the cheese will burn. Vegetarian
What survives here is the working half of a fried cheese fritter: bind, chill, drop by spoonfuls into hot fat, drain. The quantities that came before it are not recoverable, so treat the method rather than the measures as the usable part.
- Crisco means shorteningCrisco was hydrogenated vegetable shortening, sold from 1911 as a frying fat with a high smoke point and no meat flavour. Any neutral frying oil or solid vegetable shortening behaves the same way in this recipe.
- The temperature warning is the hingeThe closing line is the important instruction: cheese scorches at a lower temperature than most batters need in order to brown, so the fat must be kept moderate rather than at a normal deep-frying heat. The recipe itself gives no figure; judging the fat by eye and keeping it well short of smoking is what is being asked for.
- Why the 30 minutes mattersChilling firms the fat in the cheese and lets any starch in the binder hydrate, so the spoonfuls are more likely to hold their shape instead of dissolving into the fat.
- Dropping by teaspoonsA teaspoon of mixture gives a fritter roughly the size of a walnut. Larger spoonfuls brown outside before the centre is hot.
- Depth and batchingThe fat needs to be deep enough for the fritters to float clear of the pan bottom. Fry six or eight at a time at most; a crowded pan drops the fat temperature and the fritters absorb it.
- Draining and finishingDrain on paper or a rack, not on a plate, or the undersides steam. The final dusting of grated cheese is added off the heat and relies on residual warmth, so serve immediately.
- SeasoningPaprika here is the sweet Hungarian or Spanish sort used for colour and mild warmth, not a hot chilli powder. Salt with restraint until you know how salty the cheese is.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter and Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a fat that had no culinary tradition behind it. Hydrogenated cottonseed oil arrived in 1911 as a solid, shelf-stable, flavourless substitute for lard and butter, and the book's argument is made largely through recipes: it is full of frying, because frying was where the new fat's high smoke point and neutral taste told most clearly against the smoke and pork flavour of lard. "Calendar of Dinners" — the title under which Procter and Gamble issued its menu-and-recipe material, and the source of this entry — assigns menus to each day of the year, a common device in period cookbooks aimed at the middle-class housekeeper planning without a cook. Small fried cheese balls of this kind appear as entremets and savoury-course fare in Anglo-American cookery of the period, generally bound with egg and a little flour or breadcrumb and served hot as a garnish or a light course.
What survives here is the working half of a fried cheese fritter: bind, chill, drop by spoonfuls into hot fat, drain. The quantities that came before it are not recoverable, so treat the method rather than the measures as the usable part.
- Crisco means shorteningCrisco was hydrogenated vegetable shortening, sold from 1911 as a frying fat with a high smoke point and no meat flavour. Any neutral frying oil or solid vegetable shortening behaves the same way in this recipe.
- The temperature warning is the hingeThe closing line is the important instruction: cheese scorches at a lower temperature than most batters need in order to brown, so the fat must be kept moderate rather than at a normal deep-frying heat. The recipe itself gives no figure; judging the fat by eye and keeping it well short of smoking is what is being asked for.
- Why the 30 minutes mattersChilling firms the fat in the cheese and lets any starch in the binder hydrate, so the spoonfuls are more likely to hold their shape instead of dissolving into the fat.
- Dropping by teaspoonsA teaspoon of mixture gives a fritter roughly the size of a walnut. Larger spoonfuls brown outside before the centre is hot.
- Depth and batchingThe fat needs to be deep enough for the fritters to float clear of the pan bottom. Fry six or eight at a time at most; a crowded pan drops the fat temperature and the fritters absorb it.
- Draining and finishingDrain on paper or a rack, not on a plate, or the undersides steam. The final dusting of grated cheese is added off the heat and relies on residual warmth, so serve immediately.
- SeasoningPaprika here is the sweet Hungarian or Spanish sort used for colour and mild warmth, not a hot chilli powder. Salt with restraint until you know how salty the cheese is.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter and Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a fat that had no culinary tradition behind it. Hydrogenated cottonseed oil arrived in 1911 as a solid, shelf-stable, flavourless substitute for lard and butter, and the book's argument is made largely through recipes: it is full of frying, because frying was where the new fat's high smoke point and neutral taste told most clearly against the smoke and pork flavour of lard. "Calendar of Dinners" — the title under which Procter and Gamble issued its menu-and-recipe material, and the source of this entry — assigns menus to each day of the year, a common device in period cookbooks aimed at the middle-class housekeeper planning without a cook. Small fried cheese balls of this kind appear as entremets and savoury-course fare in Anglo-American cookery of the period, generally bound with egg and a little flour or breadcrumb and served hot as a garnish or a light course.