Shrimp Salad
1 lemon 4 tablespoonfuls vinegar 2 tablespoonfuls water 1 teaspoonful dry mustard 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 cupful celery cut in cubes 1 cupful tart apples cut in 4 eggs cubes 1 cupful broken Brazil nut 1 teaspoonful salt meats 1 teaspoonful sugar 1/2 cupful broken English walnut meats ½ teaspoonful white pepper ½ cupful thick cream and 1 Salt and pepper to taste cupful whipped cream Crisp lettuce leaves Break shrimps into pieces, put them into earthenware dish, moisten with a little melted Crisco, season with vinegar, salt and pepper. Put apple cubes into a small dish and sprinkle lightly with lemon juice, then put in celery cubes with a little more lemon juice and toss together. Cover and set aside. Prepare nut meats. Heat vinegar and water in double boiler, beat eggs, then gradually add them to vinegar, stirring all the time. Now add Crisco and cook slowly, stirring constantly. Remove from fire, and beat till cold, then add mustard, salt, sugar, and pepper. Add the thick cream just before serving. When ready to serve toss nuts, celery, apples and shrimps together with a silver fork, and add a little dressing. Heap on crisp lettuce leaves on individual plates, and pour over each salad a heaping spoonful of the dressing; and top with spoonful of unsweetened whipped cream.
PUDDINGS P UDDINGS as a rule either are boiled, steamed or baked. For boiled puddings, care should be taken that the saucepan be kept boiling or the water will get into the pudding and spoil it. For pudding cloths, use materials such as linen or cheese cloth. After using, the cloth must be thoroughly washed in plenty of water with a little washing soda, but on no account use soap, and see that the cloth is perfectly dry before putting it away. Many puddings are lighter and better steamed, and then instead of the cloth only a piece of Criscoed paper is required, twisted over the top of the basin or mold. Very light puddings, such as custards, should be placed in a steamer. Most of the steamed puddings mixed a little softer, are excellent baked in a pudding dish.
In steaming puddings keep them at a uniform heat all the time, and be careful not to lift the lid off the pan for the first half hour. All farinaceous puddings should be cooked well, as then they are easier to digest. Cornstarch must be well cooked, from eight to ten minutes. Mold for jellies or blanc-manges should be well rinsed with cold water before using. Batters must be well beaten and allowed to stand for thirty minutes or longer before cooking, because the starch in the flour swells, and the batter will therefore be lighter. Batter puddings should be put into a quick oven. Puddings composed principally of milk and eggs should be very gently cooked, as strong heat will cause them to curdle.
In stewing fruit, prepare syrup first. Bring to boil, lay fruit in, and simmer gently. Souffles should be very light and spongy. Eggs form a large part of souffles, more whites than yolks are used and the former are beaten to a stiff froth. All souffles should be served quickly. Omelets are composed mainly of eggs. They can be savory or sweet. If overcooked an omelet will be tough. To prevent milk running Puddings over when it comes to boil, put spoon in saucepan. Never leave spoon in saucepan if you wish the contents to cook quickly, and in any case a metal spoon never should be allowed to stand in a boiling saucepan containing fruit or any acid. 5 apples
The ingredient list has been scrambled by the two-column setting of the original page, and the text of the puddings chapter has run on after the method. Read the list carefully before shopping, and stop at "top with spoonful of unsweetened whipped cream."
- The missing shrimpNo quantity is given — the amount was almost certainly lost where the columns collided. For a salad built on a cupful each of celery, apple and Brazil nuts, figure 1 to 1 1/2 lb of cooked, peeled shrimp, roughly 3 cups broken into pieces. The shrimp are assumed to be already cooked or canned; nothing in the method cooks them.
- Shortening in a cold saladThis is the hinge. Crisco is solid hydrogenated shortening, and melted Crisco poured over cold shrimp sets into a waxy film on the palate. The book was selling the product, not solving a problem. A neutral oil does the same job of carrying the vinegar and seasoning without congealing.
- Reading the mangled listThe interleaved columns resolve to: 1 lemon, 4 tbsp vinegar, 2 tbsp water, 1 tsp dry mustard, 2 tbsp Crisco, 4 eggs, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, 1 1/2 tsp white pepper, salt and pepper to taste, 1 cup celery in cubes, 1 cup tart apple in cubes, 1 cup broken Brazil nuts, 1/2 cup broken English walnuts, 1 1/2 cups thick cream, 1 cup whipped cream, crisp lettuce. No quantity of shrimp survives.
- White pepperA teaspoon and a half of white pepper in a dressing for a shrimp salad is fierce by current taste. Half that is closer to what most cooks would want, added at the end where the recipe lets you correct.
- The boiled dressingThis is a cooked dressing, not a mayonnaise. Beat the eggs, add the hot vinegar and water to them slowly rather than the reverse, then return to the double boiler and stir until it coats a spoon — around 170-180F. Past that it scrambles, and no amount of beating will bring it back.
- "Thick cream"Period thick cream corresponds roughly to what is now sold as heavy cream, though the fat content was not standardised. A cup and a half of it stirred into the cooled dressing plus a further cup whipped on top gives a very rich plate; halving both is reasonable and changes nothing structurally.
- Silver fork, and whyThe instruction is not affectation. Ordinary steel of the period discoloured on contact with vinegar and lemon juice and left a metallic taste. Stainless steel makes the point moot.
- YieldNo yield is given; the quantities suggest something like six generous individual salads. It does not hold — the apple browns and the dressing weeps, so toss and plate at the table.
The Story of Crisco (1913), written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, is a cookbook with a commercial purpose: Crisco had been introduced in 1911 as a hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening, and the book's job was to show American cooks that it could stand in for butter and lard everywhere, including places butter and lard had never been. That is why a chilled shrimp salad calls for melted shortening to moisten the shrimp — a use no one would arrive at unprompted. The dressing itself is entirely of its moment: a cooked, egg-thickened boiled dressing was the standard American salad sauce well into the century, since commercially jarred mayonnaise was only just appearing and homemade emulsions were considered troublesome. The Brazil nuts and the apple mark this as a "company" salad of the sort served on individual plates at ladies' luncheons, where fruit, nuts and whipped cream together were a sign of generosity rather than a lapse in taste.