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Watercress (Select smooth even-sized beets)
Select 6 smooth even-sized beets and boil in boiling salted water until tender. Peel, remove root end and remove center, leaving shell about half inch thick. Remove stems and seeds from peppers; cover peppers with boiling water ten minutes. Dice them with scooped out beet, add Crisco,. breadcrumbs, and seasonings. Mix and divide into beet shells, dot with Crisco and bake in moderate oven twenty minutes. Serve garnished with watercress. Sufficient for six beets.
A stuffed-beet dish printed with its ingredient list detached, which is why the quantities read as blanks. Assume roughly two green peppers, 2 tablespoons fat, and a cup of soft breadcrumbs for six beets, and adjust by feel.
- CriscoModern vegetable shortening is its descendant, though the formulation has changed since 1913; butter or olive oil works better here, since nothing about the dish needs a solid fat. The book puts shortening into savoury recipes throughout, which owes as much to promotion as to cookery.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no figure; a moderate oven was generally reckoned in the region of 350-375F. Twenty minutes is enough only to heat the filling through and colour the crumbs, as the beets are already fully cooked.
- Boiling the beetsLeave an inch of stem and the whole tail on while boiling, and do not peel first, or the colour bleeds out into the water. Depending on size this takes 30 to 50 minutes; the skins slip off under cold running water.
- Hollowing the shellsA melon baller or a grapefruit spoon is the right tool. Half an inch is generous for a medium beet; leave a solid base or the shells collapse in the oven.
- The peppersTen minutes in boiling water would have softened them and taken off the raw edge; whether peppers of the period were sharper than modern ones is guesswork. Five minutes, or a quick saute, gives better texture.
- SeasoningsUnspecified, as often in this book. Salt, pepper and perhaps a little onion are the likely intent; a spoonful of vinegar or lemon juice in the filling keeps the sweetness of the beet in check.
- Yield and servingSix stuffed beets serve six as a side or three as a light lunch. They are baked, so presumably served hot, and the watercress adds a peppery note against the sweet root as well as colour.
The title looks like a filing artefact of the sort found in early promotional cookbooks: the recipe is for stuffed beets, evidently headed or indexed under the garnish. The Story of Crisco was published by Procter and Gamble in 1913 to introduce hydrogenated cottonseed oil to American cooks, and its recipe section exists to demonstrate that the new fat could stand in for butter, lard and suet in every department of the kitchen, vegetables included. Stuffed vegetables were fashionable in the same years, part of a broader movement in domestic-science cookery toward composed, individually portioned dishes. Watercress was a common garnish of the era, cheap, grown in cress beds near cities, and valued for a sharpness that cut through rich or sweet food.