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September 6
Menu: Planked Bluefish with Potato Border; Grilled Tomatoes; Corn Creole; Pepper Salad; Pepper Salad Cheese Pasties; Grape Juice Water Ice Coffee Corn Creole-Put 2 cans corn into saucepan with 2 tablespoons chopped green peppers and 1 cup milk, and cook slowly 10 minutes; season with salt and pepper, add 2 tablespoons Crisco and serve. This may be put in baking dish, covered with breadcrumbs, and baked 15 minutes.
The page title belongs to a neighboring menu item; the only recipe here is the Corn Creole, a fast stovetop dish that doubles as a gratin. It is a 1913 shortening advertisement in recipe form, and it needs almost nothing but clarification of the canned corn.
- What kind of canned cornIn 1913 "2 cans corn" would have meant corn packed in its own starchy liquor -- cream-style, or cut kernels undrained -- rather than the drained whole-kernel corn common now; period cans were also larger than modern ones. Use two standard cans of cream-style, or whole kernel with some of its liquid, or the milk will stay thin.
- Crisco is a substitute, not a requirementTwo tablespoons of any neutral solid or liquid fat does the same job here; butter or lard would serve. Stir it in at the very end, as the recipe directs, rather than boiling it in.
- Green peppers"Green peppers" means a fresh sweet bell pepper, not chile. Two tablespoons chopped is a small piece of a medium pepper. Ten minutes in milk leaves it still crunchy; if you want it soft, soften it in the fat first and stir the fat in at that point instead.
- Cook slowly means lowMilk plus canned corn starch scorches quickly on the bottom of the pan. Keep it at a bare simmer and stir; a heavy pan helps.
- The baked versionThe recipe gives no oven temperature; since everything is already cooked, the only object is browning the crumbs, so a hot oven and a short stay suit it. Toss the crumbs with a little fat first or they will stay pale and dusty.
- SeasoningCanned corn of this era was often packed with sugar. Taste before serving and be freer with the salt and pepper than the recipe implies; a dash of cayenne is in keeping with the "Creole" label.
- YieldTwo cans of corn and a cup of milk feeds four to six as a side dish, rather less if it is standing in for a main course as the calendar sometimes intends.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a product introduced in 1911: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold as a shortening that did not go rancid like lard and did not cost what butter cost. A separate P&G book, A Calendar of Dinners, gave a menu for every day of the year, and dishes like this one exist mainly to place two tablespoons of Crisco somewhere in the meal. "Creole" in an early twentieth-century American cookbook is loose usage; attached to corn it generally signals green pepper, sometimes tomato and onion, and a nod toward Louisiana rather than any particular New Orleans dish. Canned corn made this possible year-round, and sweet corn was one of the earliest vegetables to be commercially canned in quantity in the United States, which is why so many books of the period reach for it as a weeknight standby.