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October 20
Menu: Canteloupes; Young Chickens, Roasted; Stuffed Tomatoes; Grilled Potatoes; Apple and Nut Salad; Fruit Cup; Coffee Grilled Potatoes-Cut cold boiled potatoes into 1½ inch slices lengthways, dip in melted Crisco, sprinkle with chopped olives, pour over a little melted Crisco and send to table.
A one-line entry from a menu calendar rather than a fully written-out recipe, and it shows: the printed text jumps from dressing the potatoes to sending them to table without ever telling you to grill them. Fill in the browning step and it works.
- The missing stepDespite the name, no cooking is specified. Lay the dressed slices on a rack or shallow pan and broil, or brown them on a griddle, until the edges crisp and colour before adding the olives and the final drizzle of fat.
- "Grilled" in 1913In American books of this period grilled usually means broiled under or over direct heat, or seared on a flat griddle. It does not mean an outdoor barbecue grill.
- The 1½ inch slicesThe 1½ inch slices -- Lengthways slices that thick are unlikely to crisp; they will largely steam. Whether the figure is a misprint or the book's actual intention cannot be told from the text. Cut nearer ½ inch if you want browned surfaces.
- CriscoThe book's whole purpose is to sell hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Modern Crisco is reformulated and no longer contains partially hydrogenated oil. Melted butter, olive oil or a neutral oil all give a better result here.
- Cold boiled potatoesThis is a leftovers dish. Potatoes boiled the day before and thoroughly chilled slice cleanly and hold their shape; freshly boiled ones crumble.
- OlivesThe recipe does not say which sort; chopped green olives in brine, drained and patted dry, are a reasonable reading. Because they carry the salt, taste before seasoning further.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no quantities. As an editorial estimate, about 1½ lb of potatoes with a couple of tablespoons of fat will serve four as a side dish.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was Procter & Gamble's promotional cookbook for the shortening it had introduced two years earlier, the first widely marketed hydrogenated cottonseed oil sold as a substitute for both lard and butter. Marion Harris Neil supplied the recipes, and the "Calendar of Dinners" section gave a full year of dated menus, each one a small argument that the new fat could do every job in the kitchen. That structure explains the compressed, almost telegraphic form of entries like this one: the potatoes are a side note under October 21, printed to fill out a day's menu rather than to stand alone, and the instructions assume a cook who already knows how to brown a potato and only needs telling which fat to use.