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September 12
Menu: Fish Croquettes; Cucumber Puree; Broiled Duckling, Apple Sauce; Fried Cauliflower; Olive Salad; Potatoes; Omelette Souffle Coffee Fried Cauliflower-Remove large outside leaves from cauliflower, and cut flowers from stalk in symmetrical bunches and drop in salted ice water for a few moments. Cook in scalded milk and water until tender, then drain and let cool, and rub well with melted Crisco, which has been salted and peppered. Dip into frying batter and fry in hot Crisco until golden brown, draining upon white paper.
A straightforward fritter: blanch the florets, season them with fat, batter and fry. The page heading belongs to the day's menu — the recipe itself is only the fried cauliflower.
- CriscoStill sold, though the 1913 product was hydrogenated cottonseed oil rather than today's palm and soybean blend. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point works for the frying; softened butter or oil will do for rubbing the florets.
- "Hot Crisco"The recipe gives no temperature. Around 365-375F is the usual range for batter frying; much below 350F the coating absorbs fat, much above 400F the batter colors before the interior sets.
- Scalded milk and waterThe recipe gives no proportions; bring them just below a boil. The milk helps keep the cauliflower pale. Cook only until a knife slips in with slight resistance -- roughly 6-8 minutes for medium florets. Fully tender cauliflower collapses in the fryer.
- The salted ice waterNot decoration. A few minutes' soak firms the florets and flushes out anything hiding in the crevices. Drain them well; wet cauliflower will not hold batter.
- Rubbing with seasoned fatThis is the hinge. Batter seals in nothing that is not already seasoned, so the salt and pepper have to go on the vegetable itself before dipping. Let the florets cool first or the fat runs off.
- Frying batterThe original assumes a batter given elsewhere in the book — typically flour, egg, milk and a little salt, thick enough to coat a spoon. Rest it 20 minutes so the flour hydrates.
- Draining"white paper" most likely meant plain unprinted paper rather than newspaper. Paper towels or a wire rack over a sheet pan serve better, since the rack keeps the underside crisp.
- YieldOne medium head, roughly 1.5-2 lb trimmed, gives about four servings as a vegetable course. Fry in small batches so the fat holds its temperature.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was Procter & Gamble's book-length advertisement for hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, with recipes credited to Marion Harris Neil, then cookery editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. Its argument was made largely through deep frying: a fat that stayed solid at room temperature, kept without turning rancid, and had no flavor of its own was pitched as cleaner and more economical than lard or butter, and this recipe uses it twice over — once as a seasoning medium, once as the frying bath. The "Calendar of Dinners" section organized its recipes as dated menus, which is why a plate of cauliflower fritters carries the date September 13 and the heading of the dishes it was meant to accompany. Battered and fried cauliflower long predates the book; versions appear in Italian cookery, and the milk blanch was standard practice for keeping the vegetable pale.