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May 29
Menu: Raw Clams; Chicken Pie; or; Stuffed Potatoes Broiled Tomatoes; Pepper and Cucumber Salad; spoon.; Cheese Fingers; Pineapple Jelly; Coffee Stuffed Potatoes-Bake 7 good-sized potatoes. When done, cut off a lengthwise slice; scoop out potato with a spoon. Mash; add 1 tablespoon Crisco, salt and pepper to taste, 1/2 cup milk, and 2 egg whites beaten stiff. Refill skins with this mixture. Pile lightly, do not smooth, bake until potatoes are puffed and brown. Potatoes Tomatoes Radish and Watercress Salad Vanilla Pudding, Jam Sauce Coffee Beef Loaf-Mix together 3 pounds chopped raw beef, 14 pound of minced salt pork, 1 cup cracker dust, 2 teaspoons, each, of salt and pepper, and moisten all with 2 beaten eggs, teaspoonful onion juice, and teaspoon Worcestershire sauce. Work in tablespoons melted Crisco, and pack in a Criscoed mold. Cover; set in a roasting pan of boiling water, and cook in a steady oven for 2 hours. Serve with brown sauce.
A steamed-then-baked meatloaf from the Crisco calendar, cooked in a covered mold set in a water bath. The water bath is the point: it keeps a very lean mixture from drying out over two hours.
- Oven temperatureA "steady oven" here means moderate and unwavering; the book gives no figure, and something in the region of 325-350F is a reasonable modern reading rather than a stated equivalent. The water bath buffers the mold, so the loaf will not scorch, but the water should stay at a bare simmer rather than boiling hard.
- Salt porkThe quarter pound of minced salt pork is the fat and much of the seasoning. If you substitute unsmoked bacon or fatback, taste before adding the full salt, and rinse very salty pork first.
- Cracker dustFinely crushed unsalted soda crackers or plain water biscuits. About 1 cup of crumbs; panko is too coarse and fresh breadcrumbs absorb differently, so use dry crumbs if you swap.
- Seasoning quantitiesTwo teaspoons of salt for three pounds of beef is on the low side by modern taste; two teaspoons of pepper is aggressive. Season to your own judgment and fry a teaspoon of the mixture to check before packing the mold.
- Missing amountsThe numerals have dropped out of the onion juice, Worcestershire and melted Crisco quantities in this printing; the text still reads "teaspoonful onion juice" and "teaspoon Worcestershire sauce," so those units at least survive. A teaspoon of each, and two tablespoons of melted fat, will work, but the original figures are not recoverable from the text.
- The moldAny straight-sided tin or covered pudding mold of about 2 quarts, greased and covered with a lid or foil. Set it in a roasting pan and pour in boiling water to come halfway up the sides, topping up if it evaporates.
- DonenessTwo hours in a water bath is generous. Cook to an internal temperature of 160F and no further; ground beef held longer than that turns crumbly and grey through.
- YieldThree pounds of meat gives ten to twelve servings. The recipe directs it served with brown sauce, though a loaf of this kind slices cleanly once cold.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was a promotional cookbook for Procter & Gamble's hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, launched in 1911 as a substitute for lard and butter, and its recipes work hard to put Crisco somewhere in every dish -- here as a shortening worked into the meat and as a coating for the mold, jobs that had always belonged to lard or drippings. The "Calendar of Dinners" -- which circulated as a separate Crisco publication as well as alongside the Story of Crisco material -- assigned a menu to each day of the year, and this loaf is dated June 1, a dish substantial enough for a family table but happy served cold as the weather warmed. Steaming a meat loaf in a covered mold set in water, rather than roasting it dry, is what kept a mixture of lean beef and cracker crumbs from setting up hard.
A steamed-then-baked meatloaf from the Crisco calendar, cooked in a covered mold set in a water bath. The water bath is the point: it keeps a very lean mixture from drying out over two hours.
- Oven temperatureA "steady oven" here means moderate and unwavering; the book gives no figure, and something in the region of 325-350F is a reasonable modern reading rather than a stated equivalent. The water bath buffers the mold, so the loaf will not scorch, but the water should stay at a bare simmer rather than boiling hard.
- Salt porkThe quarter pound of minced salt pork is the fat and much of the seasoning. If you substitute unsmoked bacon or fatback, taste before adding the full salt, and rinse very salty pork first.
- Cracker dustFinely crushed unsalted soda crackers or plain water biscuits. About 1 cup of crumbs; panko is too coarse and fresh breadcrumbs absorb differently, so use dry crumbs if you swap.
- Seasoning quantitiesTwo teaspoons of salt for three pounds of beef is on the low side by modern taste; two teaspoons of pepper is aggressive. Season to your own judgment and fry a teaspoon of the mixture to check before packing the mold.
- Missing amountsThe numerals have dropped out of the onion juice, Worcestershire and melted Crisco quantities in this printing; the text still reads "teaspoonful onion juice" and "teaspoon Worcestershire sauce," so those units at least survive. A teaspoon of each, and two tablespoons of melted fat, will work, but the original figures are not recoverable from the text.
- The moldAny straight-sided tin or covered pudding mold of about 2 quarts, greased and covered with a lid or foil. Set it in a roasting pan and pour in boiling water to come halfway up the sides, topping up if it evaporates.
- DonenessTwo hours in a water bath is generous. Cook to an internal temperature of 160F and no further; ground beef held longer than that turns crumbly and grey through.
- YieldThree pounds of meat gives ten to twelve servings. The recipe directs it served with brown sauce, though a loaf of this kind slices cleanly once cold.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was a promotional cookbook for Procter & Gamble's hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, launched in 1911 as a substitute for lard and butter, and its recipes work hard to put Crisco somewhere in every dish -- here as a shortening worked into the meat and as a coating for the mold, jobs that had always belonged to lard or drippings. The "Calendar of Dinners" -- which circulated as a separate Crisco publication as well as alongside the Story of Crisco material -- assigned a menu to each day of the year, and this loaf is dated June 1, a dish substantial enough for a family table but happy served cold as the weather warmed. Steaming a meat loaf in a covered mold set in water, rather than roasting it dry, is what kept a mixture of lean beef and cracker crumbs from setting up hard.