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October 6
Menu: Creole Chowder; Stuffed Potatoes; Spaghetti with Cheese; Lentil and Nut Salad; Orange Puffs, Orange Sauce; Coffee Orange Puffs-Beat 1/2 cup Crisco with 2/3 cup sugar, add 2 well-beaten eggs, 3/4 cup milk, 2 cups flour, 12 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1 teaspoon orange extract. Bake in Criscoed and floured gem pans and serve hot with orange sauce. For sauce. Mix 1½ cup sugar with 2 tablespoons cornstarch, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Add 1 cup boiling water and boil eight minutes, add grated rinds and strained juice 2 oranges and 3 tablespoons Crisco.
A plain muffin batter enriched with shortening and orange extract, baked in gem pans and sauced at the table. The method is the standard creaming procedure, so the only real risk is overmixing once the flour goes in.
- Gem pansGem pans are cast-iron or tinned muffin pans with deep, rounded cups. A standard 12-cup muffin tin is the direct substitute; the batter fills about a dozen cups two-thirds full.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given in the recipe. Bake at about 400F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops spring back.
- "Criscoed and floured"Grease and flour the cups, or use paper liners. Crisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening and still sold under that name, though the formula has been reworked since 1912 to remove partially hydrogenated fat; butter at the same weight also works.
- Don't overwork the batterOnce the flour and baking powder go in, stir only until the dry streaks disappear. Beating at this stage develops gluten and gives tough, tunnelled puffs rather than tender ones.
- The salt quantityThe salt for the puffs is printed as "12 teaspoon," which cannot be right for this volume of batter. Half a teaspoon is the amount that fits a two-cup flour recipe.
- The sauce sugarThe sauce is written as one and a half cups of sugar to a cup of water, which gives a very heavy, sticky syrup rather than a pouring sauce. Half a cup to three-quarters of a cup of sugar gives a sauce consistency.
- Boiling the sauceCornstarch thickens fully within a minute or two of boiling, so the eight minutes appears to be aimed at reducing the syrup rather than at cooking the starch. Stir throughout or it will scorch on the pan bottom.
- Finishing the sauceAdd the orange rind, juice and shortening off the heat. Boiling citrus juice dulls the fresh flavour, which is the whole point of adding it at the end.
- YieldAbout 12 puffs, with roughly a cup and a half of sauce.
Crisco's promotional cookbooks existed to put the new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening into every category of cooking a household did. That explains the three tablespoons of Crisco stirred into a dessert sauce, where butter would have been the traditional choice and where the shortening contributes richness but little flavour. The dated day-by-day menu format, which assigned a menu to each day of the year, is the hallmark of Crisco's "A Calendar of Dinners" booklets, so this entry belongs to October 7 rather than to any chapter on baking. Gem pans -- the small individual quick breads baked in them were called gems -- were a fixture of American kitchens from the later nineteenth century and were commonly sold in heavy cast iron.