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November 6
Menu: Roast Duck; Egg Plant Croquettes; Peppers Stuffed with Rice; Canned Pears on Lettuce, with; Mayonnaise; Brown Bread Souffle; Coffee Brown Bread Souffle-Melt 2½ tablespoons Crisco, add 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup cream, 2 cups brown breadcrumbs, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and grated rind 1 lemon; let boil 2 minutes, stirring well, remove pan from fire, add 4 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and when cool, beaten yolks 4 eggs. Beat egg whites stiffly and add them lightly. Pour mixture into Criscoed tin, cover with Criscoed paper and steam gently 1 hour. Serve hot with sweet sauce.
A steamed bread pudding dressed up as a soufflé, from the promotional cookbook Procter & Gamble issued for its new shortening. It behaves like a light steamed pudding rather than an oven soufflé, and the steaming is the part to get right.
- The hinge: steam gentlyThe water must stay at a bare simmer for the full hour. A hard boil drives the mixture up against the cover, then collapses it, and the edges turn rubbery from the whipped whites setting too fast.
- CriscoCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold and essentially unchanged in function. Butter works in the same quantity here and tastes better; 2½ tablespoons is about 35 g.
- Brown breadcrumbsThis means crumbs from brown or wholemeal bread, not anything to do with brown sugar. Use soft fresh crumbs from a day-old loaf, not dried packaged crumbs, which will drink far more liquid and give a heavy pudding.
- "Criscoed tin" and "Criscoed paper"A greased mould or pudding basin of about 1½ quarts, filled no more than two-thirds, and a round of greased parchment laid over the top. Tie the paper down or add foil and string, or condensation will drip in.
- Adding the yolks"When cool" is doing real work — the crumb mixture must be no more than lukewarm or the yolks will scramble. Cool it to blood heat before beating them in.
- Folding the whitesFold in three additions with a spatula, stopping while a few streaks remain. Overworking here is the usual reason a steamed soufflé comes out dense.
- Sweet sauceThe recipe leaves the sauce unspecified. A hot custard, a vanilla or lemon pouring sauce, or a hard sauce all suit it, as does a lemon syrup made with the juice of the zested lemon.
- Yield and timingProbably four to six servings; the recipe gives no yield. Test at one hour with a skewer near the centre; it should come out clean and the pudding should feel springy. Unmould at once and serve, as it settles quickly.
The Story of Crisco (1913), written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, was one of the more successful pieces of cookbook advertising ever produced: several hundred recipes in which the new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, introduced in 1911, quietly replaces butter, lard and suet at every turn. Even the verbs are branded — "Criscoed tin," "Criscoed paper." The dish itself is older than the fat. Steamed puddings bound with brown breadcrumbs, lemon rind and cinnamon are long established in English cookery, and similar puddings are often linked to the German and Austrian repertoire of Brotpudding and Schwarzbrotauflauf, though no clear line of transmission is documented; calling it a soufflé reflects the period habit of applying the French term to anything lightened with beaten whites. Its place in "A Calendar of Dinners," assigned to November 7, comes from calendar-of-dinners material Procter & Gamble issued in later, expanded editions, with its promise to relieve the housekeeper of deciding what to serve — a menu for every day of the year, each one leaning on the tin.