Home › A Calendar of Dinners › September 21
September 21
Menu: Fried Cod Steaks; Sweet Potatoes; Boiled Onions; Cucumber Salad; Walnut Pudding; Feather Cake; Coffee Feather Cake-Cream 1/2 cup Crisco with 1/2 cup sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 2 eggs beaten with 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon lemon extract, 1 cup milk, 2½ cups flour, and 2½ teaspoons baking powder. Beat 2 minutes and turn into Criscoed and floured cake tin. Bake in moderate oven for 3/4 of an hour.
A plain butter-style cake made with shortening, written in the compressed telegraphic style the Calendar of Dinners used to fit a whole day's menu on one line. The word "Cream" belongs to the method, not the title: it is an instruction to cream the fat with the first half cup of sugar.
- Reading the methodThe sequence is: cream 1/2 cup Crisco with 1/2 cup sugar and the salt; beat 2 eggs with the second 1/2 cup sugar and add; then lemon extract, milk, and the flour sifted with the baking powder. Total sugar is 1 cup, not 1/2.
- Moderate ovenConventionally reckoned at about 350F; the book itself gives no temperatures. Three-quarters of an hour at that heat suits a single deep layer or a loaf; a shallow 9-inch pan will be done in 30 to 35 minutes, so test with a skewer from 30 minutes on.
- CriscoStill sold, though reformulated over the last century to cut trans fats; the current product creams a little differently but works. Any solid vegetable shortening substitutes. Butter gives a better flavour and a slightly denser crumb, since part of the point of shortening cake was its neutral taste and long keeping.
- "Criscoed and floured"Greased with shortening, then dusted with flour and the excess knocked out. Baking parchment does the same job with less fuss.
- Cake tinUnspecified, as usual in this book. The batter runs to about 5 cups, which fits an 8-inch square, a 9-inch round, or a standard loaf pan. Fill no more than two-thirds.
- Beat 2 minutesThat timing assumes a hand and a wooden spoon or a rotary beater. With a stand mixer on medium, one minute after the flour goes in is plenty; longer develops gluten and costs you the "feather" texture the name promises.
- Lemon extractA teaspoon of extract is assertive by modern taste. The zest of one lemon, rubbed into the sugar, gives a cleaner flavour if you prefer it.
- YieldOne cake, 8 to 10 slices. On the page it appears with coffee on the September 22 menu line.
The Story of Crisco (1913), written for Procter & Gamble by the cookery editor Marion Harris Neil, was published two years after Crisco went on sale and had one job: to persuade cooks that a hydrogenated vegetable fat could stand in for butter and lard in everything they already made. The Calendar of Dinners section gave a full menu for every day of the year, each one quietly routing another dish through the tin. "Feather cake" is an older American name, generally used for any plain cake beaten light enough to seem weightless, and it appears in household cookbooks well before Crisco existed; here it is doing promotional duty, since a shortening that creamed smoothly and cost less than butter had its strongest case in exactly this kind of everyday cake. The date stamp at the end, September 22, is not part of the method "}