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Strawberry Shortcake
3 cupfuls flour ½ cupful Crisco ½ teaspoonful salt 3 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1 egg 2 tablespoonfuls sugar 1 cupful milk 1½ pints strawberries 1 cupful whipped cream Sift the flour with the baking powder, salt and sugar, then cut in the Crisco with a knife, add egg well beaten, and milk. The dough should be a soft one. Roll in two layers, spread in two Criscoed pans and bake in a hot oven until a light brown color. Mash and sweeten one cupful of the strawberries, put on one layer, then place second layer on top. Sweeten remainder of strawberries, spread on top layer, and cover with the whipped cream. Decorate with whole ripe strawberries. Cakes
A biscuit-style shortcake, not a sponge — the dough is barely sweetened and depends on being handled lightly and baked fast. A few notes on the 1913 shorthand.
- "Hot oven"The book gives no temperature. In period usage this generally means somewhere in the 400–450F range. The layers are thin, so watch them and take them out when they are light brown; a slow oven dries them before they colour.
- Crisco and substitutionsCrisco in 1913 was a shortening made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold as bland and shelf-stable; today's product is reformulated. Any solid vegetable shortening works; cold butter gives more flavour, though it softens faster while you cut it in.
- Salt1½ teaspoonfuls of salt to 3 cups of flour, alongside only 2 tablespoons of sugar. Reduce to 1 teaspoon if you prefer, especially if using salted butter.
- Cut in, then stopThe hinge of the recipe. Work the fat in only until it is in pea-sized pieces, and mix in the egg and milk just to a shaggy, soft dough. Overworking turns shortcake into a tough scone.
- "Roll in two layers"Divide the dough in half and roll or pat each piece out to fit a greased round pan; no pan size or thickness is given. Two separate pans, not one cake split in half.
- Strawberries1½ pints is roughly 18 oz, about 3 cups hulled. One cup is mashed and sweetened for the middle; the remainder is sweetened and spread on top. Letting the sweetened fruit stand a while draws out syrup.
- Whipped cream"1 cupful whipped cream" is ambiguous: it may mean a cup of liquid cream (which whips to roughly double) or a cup of cream already whipped. The recipe does not say whether to sweeten it.
- ServingThe recipe gives no yield. Assemble shortly before serving, since the juice will soak into the layers as it stands.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was promotional literature from Procter & Gamble, published to teach American cooks what to do with a fat that had no culinary tradition behind it: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold as a clean, odourless, shelf-stable alternative to lard and butter. Nearly every recipe in the book is an existing standard rewritten with Crisco in the fat slot, and strawberry shortcake was a shrewd choice — it was already one of the most firmly American desserts, associated with June strawberry socials and church suppers through the second half of the nineteenth century. The biscuit-dough version here is the older form; the sweet sponge or cupcake-style shortcake sold in supermarkets today is a later commercial development. Note the instruction to "Crisco" the pans: the brand is being drilled in as a verb, which tells you exactly what the book was for.