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July 22
Menu: "Pilau, a la Turque; Peppers Stuffed with Green Corn; Huntington Salad; • Cheese Rolls; Baked Custard; Coffee Pilau, a la Turque-Put 1½ cups of stock, with 1 cup stewed and strained tomato, over fire. When boiling add 1 cup well-washed or blanched rice and 1½ teaspoon salt; stir lightly with fork, occasionally, until liquor is absorbed. Then add 1/2 cup Crisco, season with salt and pepper, and cook over hot water until tender; remove cover, and stir with fork before serving. Chipped Potatoes Fruit Jelly Toasted Cheese Fingers Coffee Fried Fish-Marinade 4 halibut steaks for 1 hour; drain, dip in salted flour, then in beaten egg, lastly in fine salted and peppered crumbs. Leave on ice for 1 hour, and fry in hot Crisco.
A standard three-stage breading for firm white fish, written in the compressed shorthand of a dinner calendar rather than as a full recipe. The one thing it leaves out is the marinade itself.
- The marinade is unspecifiedNo ingredients, quantities or method are given for it in this entry, so the hour is a soak of your own devising rather than a fixed formula. Marinades of this kind in the period were commonly oil with lemon juice or vinegar, onion and seasoning, but nothing here tells us what was meant.
- "Leave on ice for 1 hour" means refrigerateHouseholds of 1913 had an icebox, not a thermostat. An hour in the refrigerator, uncovered on a rack, is what is wanted: it firms the egg-and-crumb coating so it does not slide off in the fat.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only "hot Crisco" and gives no temperature or depth of fat. Modern practice for a breaded steak is roughly 350-375F: below that the crumbs absorb fat, above it they brown before the centre is done.
- Crisco has been reformulatedThe Crisco of this book was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, prized for a high smoke point and a neutral taste. Today's product is a palm and soybean blend reformulated to cut trans fats to trace levels; it fries much the same, and any neutral high-smoke-point fat will substitute.
- Cook to the fish, not the clockNo time is given for frying. Halibut steaks an inch thick take roughly 3-4 minutes a side and are done when the flesh just separates into flakes at the bone; current food-safety guidance for fish is 145F internal, though cooks after moist halibut often take it off earlier. Halibut is lean and turns dry and cottony quickly past that point.
- Salted flour and seasoned crumbsThe seasoning is built into each coating layer rather than added at the end, which is why the recipe specifies salted flour and salted, peppered crumbs. Use dry fine breadcrumbs, not fresh, or the crust steams instead of crisping.
- YieldFour steaks, so four servings.
The Story of Crisco (1913), compiled by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, was a promotional cookbook for a product introduced only two years earlier: hydrogenated vegetable shortening, sold as a cleaner, cheaper, more keepable alternative to lard and butter. The "Calendar of Dinners" section at the back gave dinner menus by date, which is why this entry reads as a note rather than a recipe -- it is one line of a July 24 dinner plan, and the page it sits on covers coffee as well. Marinating fish before frying was long-established practice, both to season lean flesh and, it is often said, to freshen fish that had travelled in the days before reliable refrigeration; the acid is also traditionally held to firm the surface so the breading adheres. The whole point of the entry, from the publisher's side, was the last five words.]
A standard three-stage breading for firm white fish, written in the compressed shorthand of a dinner calendar rather than as a full recipe. The one thing it leaves out is the marinade itself.
- The marinade is unspecifiedNo ingredients, quantities or method are given for it in this entry, so the hour is a soak of your own devising rather than a fixed formula. Marinades of this kind in the period were commonly oil with lemon juice or vinegar, onion and seasoning, but nothing here tells us what was meant.
- "Leave on ice for 1 hour" means refrigerateHouseholds of 1913 had an icebox, not a thermostat. An hour in the refrigerator, uncovered on a rack, is what is wanted: it firms the egg-and-crumb coating so it does not slide off in the fat.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only "hot Crisco" and gives no temperature or depth of fat. Modern practice for a breaded steak is roughly 350-375F: below that the crumbs absorb fat, above it they brown before the centre is done.
- Crisco has been reformulatedThe Crisco of this book was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, prized for a high smoke point and a neutral taste. Today's product is a palm and soybean blend reformulated to cut trans fats to trace levels; it fries much the same, and any neutral high-smoke-point fat will substitute.
- Cook to the fish, not the clockNo time is given for frying. Halibut steaks an inch thick take roughly 3-4 minutes a side and are done when the flesh just separates into flakes at the bone; current food-safety guidance for fish is 145F internal, though cooks after moist halibut often take it off earlier. Halibut is lean and turns dry and cottony quickly past that point.
- Salted flour and seasoned crumbsThe seasoning is built into each coating layer rather than added at the end, which is why the recipe specifies salted flour and salted, peppered crumbs. Use dry fine breadcrumbs, not fresh, or the crust steams instead of crisping.
- YieldFour steaks, so four servings.
The Story of Crisco (1913), compiled by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, was a promotional cookbook for a product introduced only two years earlier: hydrogenated vegetable shortening, sold as a cleaner, cheaper, more keepable alternative to lard and butter. The "Calendar of Dinners" section at the back gave dinner menus by date, which is why this entry reads as a note rather than a recipe -- it is one line of a July 24 dinner plan, and the page it sits on covers coffee as well. Marinating fish before frying was long-established practice, both to season lean flesh and, it is often said, to freshen fish that had travelled in the days before reliable refrigeration; the acid is also traditionally held to firm the surface so the breading adheres. The whole point of the entry, from the publisher's side, was the last five words.]