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October 19
Menu: Lamb Cutlets, Morland Style; Artichokes; Riced Potatoes; Celery Salad; Crackers; Cheese; Peach Melba; Coffee Artichokes-Select some small artichokes, trim them and put in earthenware stewpan containing some hot Crisco. Season with salt and pepper and cover stewpan, leaving to cook for about 10 minutes. Then add for each 1 dozen artichokes, 1 pint canned peas and 1 shredded lettuce. Cover once more and cook gently without moistening, the moisture of lettuce and peas sufficing.
A French-style braise of baby artichokes finished with peas and lettuce, written for a cook who already knew how to trim an artichoke. The page header is a printing artifact of the original calendar; the entry itself is the artichoke dish for October 20.
- The hinge: no added liquidThe whole method rests on the shredded lettuce and the canned peas releasing enough moisture to steam the artichokes. That only works over genuinely low heat with a tight-fitting lid. Check once at the halfway point and add a tablespoon or two of water if the pan has gone dry, or the fat will simply fry the artichokes.
- Which artichokes"Small" most likely means what we would call baby artichokes, small enough that the choke is undeveloped. Trim the stem, snap off the tough outer leaves, cut the top third away and halve or quarter them; holding them in acidulated water keeps them from browning.
- TimingThe first ten minutes in fat, covered, is a preliminary stage, not the full cooking. After the peas and lettuce go in, allow perhaps another 15 to 25 minutes covered before the artichoke bases yield easily to a knife tip. Mature quartered globe artichokes will need longer still.
- Crisco quantityNo amount is given. Two to three tablespoons is enough for a dozen small artichokes. Any neutral fat works; butter or olive oil suits the dish better than shortening, which the book is naturally promoting.
- Earthenware stewpanA lidded flameproof clay pot, prized then for holding steady low heat. A heavy enameled cast-iron casserole or any thick-bottomed saucepan with a snug lid does the same job.
- Canned peasA pint is a volume measure, roughly one to one and a half modern 15-ounce cans, drained. Period canned peas were softer than fresh, which is consistent with the recipe adding them at the start. If you use frozen peas instead, add them in the last five minutes and check the seasoning at the end.
- LettuceOne head of romaine or butter lettuce, shredded. It collapses to almost nothing and functions as the cooking liquid, not as a vegetable in its own right.
- YieldA dozen baby artichokes with the peas serves four as a side dish, or two as a light supper with bread.
This is petits pois à la française logic applied to artichokes: vegetables braised in fat with shredded lettuce and no added water, a technique long standard in French home cooking and closely related to the artichoke braises of Provence. Its appearance in the Crisco literature is a matter of marketing as much as cookery. Procter & Gamble introduced Crisco in 1911 and published cookbooks to teach American cooks that a hydrogenated vegetable shortening could stand in for butter, lard and oil across an entire year of menus, which is why a recipe like this one carries a specific date. The reliance on canned peas is equally of its moment: by the 1910s commercially canned vegetables appear to have been common enough that a cookbook could assume a pint tin in the pantry in October without comment.