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June 6
Menu: Hamburg Steak, Maitre d'Hotel; Asparagus; Baked Potatoes; Lettuce and Radish Salad; Lady Fingers; Strawberry Mousse Coffee Asparagus-Boil 2 cups asparagus tips in salted water 15 minutes, then 1 drain them; while they are cooking put 1 cup milk in double boiler, and when boiling pour some of it on 2 lightly beaten eggs, stirring vigorously meanwhile, then put eggs into double boiler with milk, and stir until it begins to thicken. Add 1 teaspoon Crisco, salt and pepper to taste, and remove from fire. Cut asparagus tips into 1½ inch pieces and add them to sauce. Take 6 stale rolls, cut off tops, remove inside, let them dry in oven; when crisp and hot fill each with asparagus in sauce, replace tops and serve.
The page is a fragment of a June dinner menu, but the asparagus entry is a complete recipe: a light egg-thickened sauce served in hollowed, crisped rolls. Two things need adjusting, the asparagus timing and the custard handling.
- Do not let the sauce boilThis is a stirred custard, not a flour-thickened white sauce. Once the eggs are in the double boiler it wants to be pulled at around 170-175F, when it coats the spoon; a few degrees more and it curdles into scrambled egg in milk.
- Asparagus timingFifteen minutes suits thick, mature stalks; modern tips are usually tender in 3-5 minutes in boiling salted water, and should be drained and spread out at once so they stop cooking.
- The rollsThese are croustades: cut the top off a small stale dinner roll, pull out the crumb leaving a shell about half an inch thick, and dry them in a 350F oven until crisp, roughly 10-12 minutes. Stale bread is not optional here, as fresh crumb tears and goes soggy.
- CriscoThe teaspoon of shortening is there because this is a promotional cookbook; it contributes a little richness and gloss. Butter does the same job and tastes better in a milk-and-egg sauce.
- SeasoningA milk custard with asparagus is bland unless salted firmly. Season the sauce after the eggs have thickened, and a scrape of nutmeg or a little grated cheese is in keeping with the period.
- Yield and assemblySix filled rolls, one per person as a first course or luncheon dish. Fill only at the moment of serving, since the sauce softens the shells within minutes.
- The stray menu line"June 7 Boiled Salmon, Egg Sauce" is a heading from the dinner calendar, not part of this dish. The "1" before "drain" appears to be a transcription artifact.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, which had introduced Crisco, a hydrogenated cottonseed oil shortening, in 1911, and the book works the new fat into every course of the day, which is why a teaspoon of it turns up in an egg custard sauce where it does very little work. The "Calendar of Dinners" section reflects the era's faith in planned menus: a year of dinners set out in advance for the housekeeper. Serving a creamed vegetable in a hollowed, oven-crisped roll was a familiar device in American and English cookery by the late nineteenth century, generally described as a croustade or a bread case, and it used up stale rolls while giving a soft dish something to stand in.