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September 18
Menu: Hamburg Loaf, Tomato Sauce; Maitre d'Hotel Potatoes; Beet and String Bean Salad; Cheese Creams; Chocolate Pudding with Macaroons; Coffee; Chocolate Pudding with Macaroons-; Put 3 cups milk to boil. Have 5; tablespoons grated chocolate in pan; with 1/2 cup boiling water and 4; tablespoons sugar. When chocolate; paste is smooth pour in milk. Mix; 4 tablespoons cornstarch with 1 cup; milk, add 1 teaspoon Crisco, and 14; teaspoon salt, and with this thicken; boiling milk. Add 1 cup macaroon; crumbs and beaten whites of 2; Pour into wet mold and set; eggs.; on ice 1 hour.
A cornstarch blancmange enriched with chocolate and macaroon crumbs, set in a mold rather than baked. The whole thing works on the stovetop in about twenty minutes.
- Crisco's roleThe single teaspoon of shortening is there to enrich the starch base and give it gloss — the book's purpose was to put Crisco into everything. A teaspoon of butter does the same job with more flavor, or leave it out entirely with no harm to the set.
- Grated chocolateIn 1913 this generally meant unsweetened block or cake chocolate, grated. Use 5 tablespoons chopped or grated unsweetened baking chocolate, roughly 1 to 1.5 ounces. Cocoa powder is not a direct substitute; it lacks the cocoa butter and will taste thin.
- The salt quantityThe salt figure has lost its fraction in printing. A quarter teaspoon is right for this volume of milk.
- Order of operationsThe final lines are jumbled: add the macaroon crumbs and the beaten egg whites to the hot pudding, then pour into a wetted mold and chill. Fold the whites in off the heat, working quickly, so they lighten the pudding rather than scramble.
- Cooking the starchCornstarch needs to reach a full boil and hold it for a minute or two after thickening, stirring constantly, or the pudding tastes chalky and may weep as it sets.
- Wetting the moldRinsing the mold in cold water and leaving it damp is what lets the pudding release cleanly. Do not grease it — fat leaves a dull, streaked surface.
- Chilling timeOne hour on ice was optimistic even then. Three to four hours in the refrigerator gives a pudding firm enough to unmold; overnight is better.
- MacaroonsAlmond macaroons were the usual sort in this period, chewy, and often left to dry before being crumbled, though coconut versions also existed. Italian amaretti crushed to coarse crumbs are the closest thing on a modern shelf; coconut macaroons give a quite different dessert.
- YieldFour cups of milk plus thickener fills a 1.5-quart mold and serves six to eight.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was Procter & Gamble's book-length advertisement for hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and Procter & Gamble also issued a volume of daily menus, supplying a full menu for every day of the year so that a housewife would find Crisco written into her ordinary cooking rather than into novelty dishes. This pudding is the older tradition of cornstarch blancmange, a nineteenth-century staple built on cheap boxed starch rather than the costly gelatin and isinglass of earlier cookery. The macaroon crumbs are a thrift device as much as a flavoring: dry almond macaroons kept well and were said to be crumbled into puddings, charlottes and trifles rather than thrown out. The teaspoon of Crisco in an otherwise self-sufficient recipe shows the book's method plainly — the fat contributes almost nothing here except the brand name.