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May 6
Menu: Pear and Ginger Cocktail; Tomato and Vermicelli Soup; Broiled Beefsteak; French Fried Potatoes; Lettuce Salad; Lemon Pudding, White Sauce; Coffee French Fried Potatoes-Wash and pare small potatoes, cut in eighths lengthwise, and soak 1 hour in cold water. Take from water, dry between towels, and fry in deep Crisco. Drain on brown paper and sprinkle with salt. To test Crisco, heat until a crumb of bread becomes a golden brown in 20 seconds.
A plain deep-frying formula from the Crisco booklet, with the fat temperature given in the older way -- by bread crumb rather than by thermometer. The two steps that matter are the soak and the drying.
- The bread test in degreesA crumb browning in 20 seconds corresponds to roughly 375-385F. Set a thermometer to 375F and you will be in the right band; below about 340F the potatoes absorb fat and go limp.
- Dry them properlyThe hour in cold water rinses off surface starch, but wet potatoes drop the fat temperature and spit. Towel them until they feel dry to the touch -- this is the hinge of the whole recipe.
- Cut sizeSmall potatoes cut in eighths lengthwise gives thick wedges, not modern shoestrings. Allow roughly 6-8 minutes or more at 375F depending on thickness; thinner cuts need proportionally less.
- One fry or twoThe single fry here produces a softer chip. For a crisp shell, current practice blanches at about 300F, cools, then finishes at 375F -- a technique the booklet does not use.
- Crisco itselfThe original product was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, solid at room temperature. Today's Crisco is reformulated and any neutral high-smoke-point oil or shortening behaves the same way here.
- Brown paperThe recipe drains on brown paper. Use paper towels, or better a wire rack, so the undersides do not steam.
- SaltingSalt while the potatoes are still glossy with fat; it will not adhere once they cool.
- QuantityNo yield is given. Reckon one medium potato per person as a side, and fry in small batches so the fat does not fall below temperature.
- The stray line"May 7 Tomato Pot Roast" is the next entry in the book's calendar of dinners, not part of this recipe.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913, two years after the shortening went on sale, with recipes credited to Marion Harris Neil. It is a cookbook written to sell a product: dish after dish is arranged to show that a hydrogenated vegetable fat could do the work of lard and butter, and deep frying showed the fat off well, since it was cheap, kept without turning rancid, and had a high smoke point. The name "French fried" is often explained as referring to the cut -- to french a vegetable being to cut it in lengthwise strips -- rather than to any French origin for the dish, but the etymology is disputed, as are the competing claims that fried potatoes began in Parisian or Belgian street cookery around the turn of the nineteenth century. The calendar of dinners format, assigning a full menu to each day of the year, was a common device in household books of the period, meant to spare the housekeeper the daily decision of what to serve.