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September 2
Menu: Cavaire on Toast; Fricassee of Chicken Banana Fritters; Boiled Potatoes Creamed Onions; Vegetable Salad; Snow Pudding with Custard; Coffee Snow Pudding with Custard-Mix 2 tablespoons arrowroot with 3 tablespoons cold milk. Boil 1 cup milk then pour it on to mixed arrowroot, pour back into pan and boil gently for 8 minutes, stirring all the time, then allow to cool. Stir in yolks of 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons Crisco, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 3 tablespoons sugar, pour into Criscoed pudding dish; beat whites of eggs to a stiff froth and mix lightly in. Dust nutmeg over top and bake in moderate oven 10 minutes. Serve quickly with custard.
A baked snow pudding from the promotional recipe calendar in The Story of Crisco — closer to a light steamed-milk soufflé than the cold gelatine "snow pudding" of the same era. A few of its instructions run against what we now know about arrowroot and about egg cookery.
- Do not boil the arrowroot for eight minutesArrowroot sets at around 170F and then breaks down under prolonged heat, going thin and slightly slimy. Bring the milk mixture just to a simmer, stir until it thickens and coats the spoon, and take it off — a minute or two, not eight. Cornstarch in the same quantity tolerates the longer cooking better if you prefer to follow the text literally.
- "Moderate oven"350F. The book assumes a coal or gas range with no thermometer, so the ten-minute timing is a guess at best.
- Ten minutes is not enoughA dish of thickened milk, two yolks and two beaten whites will need roughly 20-25 minutes at 350F in a shallow pudding dish before the centre is set and puffed. Bake until the top is domed and firm to a light touch rather than by the clock; the yolks are stirred into a base that has been allowed to cool, so the oven is doing all the cooking of the egg.
- "Criscoed pudding dish"Simply greased with shortening. A 1-quart shallow baking dish suits the volume; a deeper one will take longer and set unevenly.
- The CriscoTwo tablespoons of vegetable shortening, added here purely because the book exists to sell it. Butter gives the same richness with more flavour, and the pudding works without any fat at all.
- Fold, do not stir"Mix lightly in" means fold the stiff whites through the cooled, enriched base in a few strokes. The base must be cool or the whites will collapse and the pudding will bake dense.
- The custardNo recipe is given for it. A thin pouring custard sauce is what is wanted here; a workable modern version is 2 cups milk, 3 yolks and 2 tablespoons sugar, cooked to about 175F and strained, served warm alongside.
- YieldFour small servings. "Serve quickly" is literal: like any soufflé-type pudding it begins to fall within a few minutes of leaving the oven.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913, two years after Crisco itself went on sale in 1911, and it is advertising as much as cookery — the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening had to be argued into kitchens that knew only butter, lard and suet, so the book put it into everything, desserts and puddings included. This page comes from its "Calendar of Dinners," a day-by-day menu scheme running through the year, which is why the recipe sits oddly under the heading "Coffee" and runs straight into the next day's stewed liver. The name "snow pudding" was applied loosely in Anglo-American cookery to any pale dish lightened with beaten egg white; the better-known version is a cold gelatine and lemon whip, but baked milk-and-arrowroot puddings carried the name too, and both were conventionally sent to the table with a boiled custard sauce. Arrowroot, imported chiefly from St Vincent, was prized as a light, easily digested thickener suited to invalids and children, which is largely how nursery puddings of this kind earned their place on a family menu.