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November 15
Menu: Vegetarian; Sweet Potatoes au Gratin; Corn, a la Southern; Raisin and Nut Bread; Apples Stuffed with Celery; Caramel Custards; Coffee Raisin and Nut Bread-1 egg, 3/4 cup sugar, 1½ cups milk, 1 teaspoon salt, 3 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 2 tablespoons Crisco, 1½ cup raisins, and 1 cup chopped walnut meats. Beat egg with sugar; add sifted flour, baking powder and salt alternately with milk; last add Crisco, melted, and walnuts. Bake in deep pan in slow oven 45 minutes.
A plain quick bread from Crisco's promotional dinner calendar, written in the compressed telegraphic style of the period. Two things in the original need attention before you start: the raisins never appear in the method, and the bake time is short for the volume of batter.
- The raisinsThey are listed but never mentioned again in the instructions. Fold them in with the walnuts at the end. Tossing them with a spoonful of the measured flour first keeps them from sinking.
- An ambiguous measurement"1½ cup raisins" is inconsistent with the rest of the list, which uses 1½ cups elsewhere. It most likely means 1½ cups; a full cup and a half of raisins plus a cup of walnuts is a heavily loaded batter, and 1 cup of raisins gives a more balanced loaf if you prefer.
- Slow ovenA slow oven is usually given as somewhere around 300-325F, though period tables vary. For a quick bread of this size, 325F is the sensible reading; much lower and the centre will not set before the crust dries.
- Deep pan and time"Deep pan" most likely means a loaf pan; 3 cups of flour suits a 9x5-inch tin. At 325F expect it to need longer than the stated 45 minutes. Test with a skewer in the centre and tent with foil if the top colours early.
- CriscoAny vegetable shortening works, measured as 2 tablespoons and melted. Melted butter or a neutral oil substitutes directly; with only 2 tablespoons of fat in a 3-cup batter the difference in crumb is slight.
- Mixing methodThis is a muffin-method batter, not a creamed one. Stir only until the flour disappears after each addition; overworking it after the milk goes in produces tunnels and a rubbery crumb.
- Yield and servingOne loaf, about 12 slices. Quick breads of this type slice cleanly only once fully cool, and improve wrapped overnight. The calendar pairs it with coffee, which is exactly right.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was Procter & Gamble's book-length argument for hydrogenated vegetable shortening, published a couple of years after Crisco went on sale, and the "Calendar of Dinners" material associated with it — often treated as a section of the book, though it also circulated for P&G under its own title — gave a suggested menu for every day of the year with the new fat worked into as many dishes as possible. This entry belongs to a large family of early twentieth-century American nut breads: chemically leavened, sweet enough to eat with coffee but not iced, and cheap to make once baking powder was reliable and commercially standardised. Raisins and walnuts were the two enrichments almost any household could keep on the shelf, and loaves like this one filled the gap between bread and cake at afternoon coffee and on the tea table. That only 2 tablespoons of shortening appear in a 3-cup batter is itself a period marker; the point of the recipe, from the publisher's side, was less the quantity than the habit.