A Calendar of Dinners With 615 Recipes (1920), by Marion Harris Neil, was distributed by the Crisco Company. Crisco was first made by Proctor and Gamble in 1911. It is kosher and vegan-friendly, as it is all vegetable. Of course it is also 100% fat, so not exactly a health elixir. Though to read this little book, one might be lulled into thinking that it was. Why, Ms. Neil calls fat “man’s most important food” and Crisco itself is dubbed “this rich, wholesome cream of nutritious food oils in sanitary tins.” That’s pretty nearly poetry in a can.
Oh, sorry – I mean, in a sanitary tin.
After the inexorable march through 600+ Crisco-based recipes, Ms. Neil gives you a menu for every day of the year. I checked up on what we ought to be cooking today, and here’s what you ought to get going on the stove on April 20th:
Celery Soup
Braised Ox-Tongue
Baked Potatoes, Mashed Turnips
Cold Slaw, Cheese, Wafers
Rice Mousse, Coffee
All of the menus are like this, with many dishes. A year of this would be like going to my grandmother’s for Sunday lunch every single day. And not even my dear grandmother - a wonderful cook – would have wanted to make fancy puddings and soups and roast whatnot day after day.
Note the old-fashioned term “cold slaw,” which is of course what we call ”cole slaw.” Here it says that in England the dish was originally called “cold slaw” but that the later use of “cole” came from the Latin “colis,” meaning cabbage.
I wanted to find the Rice Mousse recipe to share, but Crisco’s “Domestic Scientists” forgot to share it in the book. I found something else in the complex-carb line instead, though not a dessert.
Not surprisingly, the sanitary-tin-wielding Domestic Scientists are especially keen on desserts (though not on Rice Mousse, seemingly). There are lots of good cakes and puddings in here. But desserts are not all they can test, oh no! I also came across this unusual recipe for a meat-free sausage:
POTATO SAUSAGE
1/2 cupful Crisco
1/4 lb chopped onions
1/2 lb cold boiled mashed potatoes
1/2 lb breadcrumbs
salt and pepper to taste
2 beaten eggs
Mix all ingredients thoroughly well together with wooden spoon, then form into sausages; tie each well in cloth, and boil exactly as a roly-poly. If not to be eaten when newly cooked, put aside, and untie when wanted. This sausage is also good when oatmeal is added instead of breadcrumbs, or it may be made of half oatmeal and half breadcrumbs. Sufficient for twelve sausages.
This is in the “Vegetarian Dishes” section, which implies that a significant number of people were vegetarians in the 1920s. Here is a sensational post at Edwardian Promenade about the history of vegetarianism. I feel fortunate to live in the age of soy sausages, I really do.
