Food fashions
[NOTE: I noticed this amusing comment from “Fractal Rabbit” in the pasta-cooking thread:
Sadly, I’d eat a spaghetti sandwich everyday if I could get away with it.
That is, if my blood sugar could get away with it.
Trying to imagine the taste of a spaghetti sandwich put me in mind of Crisco sandwiches.
Yes, Crisco sandwiches were a Real Thing, which I wrote about in one of my earliest blog posts, reproduced here because I doubt any of you were readers back then.]
I was surprised at the depth of feeling evidenced in the recent Crisco cookie wars (if you are unaware of what I’m referring to, see here). I hope we have reached the point where we can now call a truce by stating that the real difference between the two sides appears to be one of dunkers vs. non-dunkers. Simply put, those who dunk cookies prefer them to be made with Crisco; those who don’t, don’t.
But the whole cookie discussion started me thinking about Crisco itself. This is unusual; Crisco, like Spam, is something I don’t ordinarily think about. We didn’t use either one all that much in our house when I was growing up, even though it was the Fifties–except, of course, for the obligatory piecrust (made with Crisco, that is, not Spam). And meditating on Crisco made me think of a very odd but strangely fascinating book I once read.
The book is called Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century. Written by Laura Shapiro, it’s a history of the “Scientific Cooking” movement, in which a group of women of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s tried to revolutionize American cooking, introducing the idea of order and form as paramount considerations. Sounds rather dull, but I found the book surprisingly riveting.
It turns out that these ladies were trying to tame food and civilize it. The goal was to make it an esthetic and refined experience, as far from its “animal” roots as possible, and devoid of any “low” and ethnic influences–such as, for example, that tiny detail known to us as taste (if you are of a certain age, like me, and you wonder why the food of your youth was so uniformly bland, these ladies share some of the blame). Color was elevated to a matter of extreme importance, and white was the very best color of all.
It’s hard to imagine exactly what this entailed in practice, so to get an idea to what lengths the advocates were willing to go, here’s an excerpt from the book:
Color-coordinated meals enjoyed a surge of popularity…Mrs. Lincoln once shared with her readers the description of a green-and-white luncheon created by a subscriber. Grapefruit, lightly covered with white frosting and pistachio nuts, opened the meal; cream of pea soup with whipped cream followed; and the main course was boiled chicken with banana sauce, accompanied by macaroni, creamed spinach, potato balls, and parsley. Green-and-white ices and cakes completed the picture…Mrs. Rorer had a special fondness for the all-white meal, which she didn’t mind going to some lengths to achieve. Cream soups, cream sauces, boiled poultry, and white fish dominated her dinners, with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and angel cake for dessert.
I don’t know about you, but this is my idea of revolting. And where does Crisco come in? In 1911, to be exact–as the makers of Crisco inform us, having thoughtfully provided us with a timeline on the Crisco website. Crisco was the quintessential white, pure food, the dream come true of the scientific cooking movement. Leached of taste, smell, and the ability to spoil, it was lauded and embraced by these women.
Here is Perfection Salad on the subject of the introduction of Crisco:
Crisco had been tested extensively in the laboratory ever since its discovery…Now it was ready for the public: “Dip out a spoonful and look at it. You will like its very appearance, for it is a pure cream white, with a fresh, pleasant aroma….Crisco never varies…[it] is put up in immaculate packages, perfectly protected from dust and store odors. No hands ever touch it…”
Some early Crisco recipes:
Caramel Sweet Potatoes could be glazed with brown sugar and Crisco; stuffed onions could be filled with bread crumbs and Crisco; sandwiches could be spread with Crisco mixed with an egg yolk and seasoned rather highly with Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and vinegar; and finally, a pure and tasteless white sauce could be prepared by melting two tablespoons of Crisco, adding two tablespoons of flour, and stirring in a cup of milk.
I do believe I have finally found the source for the recipes used by the chefs (I use the word advisedly) in the dining hall at my college dorms.
[ADDENDUM: It probably goes without saying that the whole thing was irredeemably racist. White food, indeed!]
I never had a Crisco sandwich, although that and margarine were staples at our home. I never ate real butter until I got to college.
However, my brother would spread margarine on white bread and sprinkle it with white sugar; I preferred black-strap molasses on my buttered bread.
Born of necessity rather than science, this post reminds me of the lard sandwiches my father told me about. his mother made them often. during the Depression, you know.
Lurch:
In the book (I’m doing this from memory) Crisco sandwiches predated the Depression, and were lauded as extremely nutritious fare for children for school lunches, on white bread.
I’ve gone from Crisco to the Mexican Lard, Mantega, for the extra crispy feel that fried or baked foods need to be really delicious.
Thank God, my family was country oriented. My grandfather ‘s butchering day was Thanksgiving and they made their own sausages and lard, and cured their own country hams. My aunt churned her own butter. There was no color coordination. We ate what was ripe in the garden in summer, and what we canned the rest of the year. We did have Crisco, but that was for frying.
My grandmother grew up in Oklahoma and was a bland cook, but the main thing I recall was she decorated her homes entirely in white, off-white and beige.
It was rather terrifying as a child to enter her living room with its thick off-white carpet and worry about soiling it.
At Christmas she made dozens and dozens of school day cookies – in her recipe, thick cakey chocolate cookies each with a generous dollop of buttery white icing, which looked remarkably like … Crisco.
One of the minor pet peeves of my youth was mother’s creamed peas, or creamed niblets corn, or creamed green beans. It was a particular sacrilege because the veggies were usually only hours from their harvest. As time went on, she would pull my serving from the steamer before creaming them.
Neo:
“I don’t know about you, but this is my idea of revolting.”
I couldn’t agree more. What a hellish little culinary hole to travel down.
BTW — My Oklahoma grandmother once claimed to be Cherokee to get my pregnant mother into the Santa Fe Indian Hospital because there was no room at the regular one.
Shades of Elizabeth Warren.
My grandmother was all Scots-Irish but she did have great cheekbones.
vanderleun Says:
April 20th, 2018 at 3:10 pm
I’ve gone from Crisco to the Mexican Lard, Mantega, for the extra crispy feel that fried or baked foods need to be really delicious.
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The only thing to use for really good pie crust is lard.
In defense of Crisco, it does make the whitest frosting for wedding cakes, especially if you use clear vanilla.
I lived in San Francisco for over thirty years.
There are other uses for Crisco.
Crisco sandwiches? Ok, how about Eskimo Icecream? Thats Crisco (origionally rendered blubber) mixed with blueberries.
I used to eat bacon grease sandwiches on white bread. Delicious.
Huxley, don’t use Crisco, it’s shortening
I’ve often wondered how much that original Crisco contributed to the common heart attacks of the mid-20th century.
But it’s hard to find good data on how much partially hydrogenated vegetable oil we’ve been eating over the decades.
Perfection Salad was fascinating. Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking School cook book was the standard wedding present gift for young brides when my grandmothers got married in the ’20s so I ended up with two very differently annotated-and-cooked-from copies.
The food, let alone the whole menu, all sounds revolting and I loathe Crisco but it is also important to remember that it was not stupid to worry about food purity and preservation. The days of adulterated bread and indifferent refrigeration leading to rancid or even rotting food were within their memory.
Cristo is FAKE food, 100 % Synthetic trans fat..Clogs the blood vessels & tricks your own body into making more cholesterol
Deadly stuff. It has been observed that when a tub of this stuff or any shortening is opened and left in your garage, no insect, no mouse or other scavenger will ever show up to eat
it ! The can will just sit there for years ,dehydrate a bit & get discolored around the edges. To think people, duped, put this in their bodies. If you read the history of cisco (shortening) it was originally created as synthetic candle wax. not needed by Procter & gamble because electric lighting came in, then they tried to make it as soap, and ultimately it became a replacement for lard. Lard is actually preferable to shortening as it contains a beneficial beef fat used by the body in a good way. CrISco has none of this. As for magazine, synthetic butter, this was a HUGE fraud perpetrated on the unfortunate American public by Food lobby & FDA. They deliberately selected Fat to be the boogy man in heart disease when all the time the culprit has been sugars or carbs & trans fats.
The information that olive oil. grapeseed oil, nut oils like walnut were anti heart disease was never given to the American public at large. Ethnic groups, particularly from the Mediterranean were savvy enough to stick with their olive oil & spread it’s usage to the rest of us.
Crisco,BTW and margarine are variations of the same stuff
trans fats. Originally margarine was made with lard. but was reformulated in the US to be hydrogenated vegetable oils.
The food industry took natural fats that are liquid and healthy at room temperature and pumped them full of hydrogen changing their chemistry to make them solid at room temperature & indigestible to the human body.
So for sometime now I use butter for pie crusts and anywhere else shortening is required , expensive but I prefer a good blood lipid profile to a few extra bucks in my wallet.
Eric Ivers,
“I used to eat bacon grease sandwiches on white bread. Delicious.”
I’m equally fascinated and disgusted by this idea. But then again, this is coming from a guy who likes to make spaghetti sandwiches at the table.
Also, I should add, that while I still make spaghetti sandwiches at the table (and my son does the same now!), Spaghetti Sandwiches aren’t the same anymore.
When I was a kid, when this whole pasta idiosyncrasy began, my mom made spaghetti dinner every Wednesday night (Fractal Rabbit’s favorite night of the week!). And she used a Chef Boyardee product that was a Spaghetti Dinner in a box; a small box of pasta, a tube of sauce, a can of Parmesan cheese. Sadly this product was discontinued.
I used to LOVE that stuff! My mom laughs when I tell her that I used to prefer the early days before my father’s wages went up significantly and we had to eat on the cheap every night (Hamburger Helper was my other favorite).
@ rabbit I think what you are talking about is Kraft spaghetti dinner. We non Italians ate this too, mostly on Thursday nights.It came with seasoning for the sauce in a packet & as you say Parmesan cheese in a packet, great as non Italians were not clued into that yummy stuff. You provided your own tomato puree that became the sauce when you sprinkled the seasoning in, I agree it was a very tasty spaghetti dinner
Molly NH:
Nope! While I am familiar with the Kraft version, that is not the same. After I read your comment I looked it up and found this:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/73465037642316042/
Now, that’s what I’m talking about! Yum
My favorite was spaghetti with ketchup and butter. Absolutely delicious. We didn’t have it at our house, but my next-door-neighbor’s mother made it all the time for lunch. She didn’t just mix the ketchup and butter in there; she browned it afterwards, and the butter melted and browned a bit and the sugar in the ketchup must have caramelized slightly,too.
You have no idea how good that was unless you’ve had it.
“My favorite was spaghetti with ketchup and butter.”
I just involuntarily did the “icky” dance, while dry retching, right here at my desk.
And this, coming from the Spaghetti Sandwich guy himself.
Huxley, don’t use Crisco, it’s shortening
William Maron: I don’t. Others do.
@rabbit, we loved the kraft version and never ventured over to Chef boyardee, although to a kid his canned ravioli was the bomb
@ Neo, can’t say I ever heard of that one
But I shock my family by putting ketchup and butter on stuffed cabbage.
neo-neocon Says:
April 21st, 2018 at 1:38 pm
My favorite was spaghetti with ketchup and butter.
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Actually that sounds pretty good!
Caramelized anything is tastier than the un- original.
FWIW, the reason we like toast so much is that the heat caramelizes the sugars in the bread and makes it sweeter (plus the crunch, of course).
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/elaine-marie-alphin/toasters/
“Who would have thought that the toaster would ever achieve status as a cultural icon? Yet, in four short and snappy chapters, Alphin (Vacuum Cleaners, 1997, etc.) and the Household History series (see Young, below) continue to prove that even the most mundane appliance is worthy of serious study. Readers curious about the mechanics of toasters will learn the details of how plain bread is transformed into warm and nourishing breakfast food through the magic of trip plates, timer strips, and browning controls. Alphin’s description of the development of the modern toaster, accompanied by plentiful photographs and illustrations of early models, is both comprehensive and fascinating. The icing on the cake, or rather the jam on the toast, is a selection of simple recipes for comfort food favorites. (glossary, index) (Picture book/nonfiction. 8-11)”
When I read about this white food movement, I felt certain it must mean my maternal grandmother’s people, the Swedes. Clicking deeper through article after article, the Scandinavians, the Germans, and the word “Lutheran” kept coming up. They still love white food.