Home › A Calendar of Dinners › June 8
June 8
Menu: Veal Cutlet, Brown Gravy; Mashed Potatoes; Pea Salad; Glazed Carrots; Cottage Pudding, Strawberry Sauce; Coffee Glazed Carrots-For this, carrots must be cut into even cones or ovals, and it is convenient to use imported carrots in glass bottles. If these are used they are already boiled; if fresh carrots are used scrape, wash them and cut out little shapes with patent cutter, then boil slowly until tender, but not quite done, and put 4 cups of them in frying pan with 4 tablespoons melted Crisco, sprinkle with fine sugar, and stir over hot fire until they begin to brown; add 4 tablespoons stock they were boiled in, adding more stock if needed, and continue stirring until carrots are nicely glazed.
A straightforward French-style glaze, written for a 1910s kitchen stocked with bottled vegetables and a coal range. Two or three of the terms need translating.
- CriscoAny neutral solid shortening works, and 4 tablespoons of butter is better still for carrots, since browning butter adds flavour the shortening cannot. The book calls for Crisco because it was published to sell it.
- Fine sugarSuperfine or caster sugar, which dissolves before it scorches. Granulated sugar works if you keep the pan moving; about 2 teaspoons for 4 cups of carrots is enough to glaze rather than candy.
- Patent cutterA period vegetable cutter or scoop of the kind sold for stamping out uniform shapes. Cones and ovals can be turned with a paring knife, or simply cut the carrots into even 1-inch batons; uniformity matters more than the shape.
- Bottled carrotsImported carrots in glass were a convenience item of the era. Canned or jarred whole baby carrots are the modern equivalent, already cooked and needing only the glazing step; drain and pat dry first or they will steam instead of brown.
- "Boil until tender, but not quite done"This is the hinge. Stop while the carrots still resist a knife tip, roughly 6 to 8 minutes for small pieces, because they finish cooking in the fat and stock. Fully cooked carrots collapse into mush during the glazing.
- "Hot fire"Medium-high heat. You want the sugar and the carrot surfaces to colour in a few minutes, not to smoke the fat.
- The stockThe carrot cooking water, which carries sweetness and a little starch to help the glaze cling. Chicken stock works too. Add it a few tablespoons at a time and let each addition reduce to a syrup before adding more.
- YieldFour cups of cut carrots is about 1 1/2 lb raw, serving six to eight as a side dish.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter and Gamble in 1913, two years after Crisco went on sale, and it is a cookbook in the service of a product: recipe after recipe substitutes hydrogenated vegetable shortening for the butter, lard or suet a cook of the day would have reached for. The "Calendar of Dinners" section supplied a full menu for each day of the year, which is why this recipe carries a date and sits under a heading that belongs to the dish before it. Glazed carrots themselves are older and French, carottes glacées, built on the standard method of finishing a parboiled vegetable in fat, sugar and a little of its own cooking liquid until the liquid reduces to a shine. The instruction to use "imported carrots in glass bottles" is a small window on the period's grocery trade, when preserved European vegetables were a mark of an ambitious American table.</td>