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June 2
Menu: Green Vegetable Soup; Fried Chicken, Virginia Style; Cornmeal Bread; Broiled Tomatoes; Bean Salad; Strawberry Fritters; Coffee Strawberry Fritters-Have large, ripe strawberries, remove hulls and clean them thoroughly. Moisten each berry with little brandy, roll in sugar and stand till berries absorb considerable sweetness. Roll them in finest possible breadcrumbs and drop into hot Crisco. Sprinkle strawberries with powdered sugar when taking up, and serve with them sweetened whipped cream. Care must be taken that strawberries are not too ripe. They must be quite hard and firm to be perfectly satisfactory when served.
A brief, unusual recipe: whole berries macerated in brandy and sugar, crumbed and deep-fried. The instruction that matters is the one the author repeats — the berries must be firm, or they collapse in the fat.
- Berry selectionChoose large berries that are ripe but still hard and firm; the recipe asks for ripe fruit and then warns against fruit that is too ripe. Soft fruit leaks juice into the crumb coating and can burst in the fat, which spatters.
- Frying temperatureThe original only says "hot Crisco." Work at 365–375°F; the coating is thin and browns in 30 to 60 seconds. Cooler fat soaks the crumbs, hotter fat scorches the sugar.
- The coating is fragileThere is no batter or egg wash here — the sugar syrup drawn out of the berry is the only glue holding the crumbs on. Roll in very fine dry crumbs, press them on firmly, and fry immediately in small batches. Modern cooks often add an egg-and-flour dip for security, though that departs from the recipe as written.
- Maceration timeThe original gives no time: "stand till berries absorb considerable sweetness." In practice 20 to 30 minutes is usually enough; left much longer, the sugar and brandy draw out juice and soften the fruit past usefulness.
- CriscoCrisco is still sold and behaves much as it did, though the modern product is no longer based on hydrogenated cottonseed oil; it is now a soybean and palm blend that still includes fully hydrogenated palm oil. Any neutral solid shortening or a high-smoke-point oil works; a flavorful fat would fight the fruit.
- DrainingLift onto a rack rather than paper, then dust with powdered sugar while still hot so it clings. Sitting on paper steams the underside and softens the crust within a minute or two.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities or yield; a quart of berries would serve roughly four to six as a dessert course. Fry and serve in immediate succession -- these do not hold, and the whipped cream should be waiting on the table, not the fritters.
- Menu fragmentThe lines after the recipe ("June 3 — Crab Soup, Salmon à la Francesca, Veal, Roasted") are the start of the next day's menu in the book's dinner calendar, not part of this dish.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, which had introduced Crisco in 1911 as a solid vegetable shortening to compete with lard and butter. The book is frankly promotional — nearly every recipe specifies the product by name — and it laid out a year of menus to persuade households that one tin of shortening could serve for frying, pastry and cake alike; it was later reissued under the title A Calendar of Dinners. A selling point urged in the advertising for the new fat was its neutrality: it was said to carry no flavor from one dish to the next, which is precisely what a fried strawberry requires and what lard or drippings would have spoiled. Sweet fritters of whole fruit, brandied and crumbed, belong to an older European tradition of beignets made from apricots, cherries and grapes; strawberries are a harder case because they hold so much water, which is why Neil twice warns against ripe fruit.