Found my grandmother's donut recipe

P

Paul B

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Background: old memories, and watching grandma cooking donuts on an old wood stove, frying pan(cast iron) oil heating away and plain donuts bubbling away.

My big question is what grease might have been used 70ish years ago? I have the receipt, will post here.
My next question: what oil to use nowadays?
My guess would be either lard or cottonseed oil. Both hard to locate. I don't have the wood stove but I do have the CI pans.

Paul B
 

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Crisco nowadays is made with other types of oils.
I'm trying to get as close to original as possible, so the flavor profile would be similar.
In our rv travels we have stopped at many non franchise shops but none seem to compare. I do know that using original ingredients i.e. old, makes a difference. Who knows I may not be able to get there, but I've got to try.
Paul B
 
It would be lard you are after but the problem is that the lard you buy in the grocery store is not the same as in the 50's. I butcher my own hogs so I render fat for lard. If there's a small slaughter house near you see if they'll sell you raw fat from the hogs and render it yourself. You won't believe how good it is done this way.
 
I would think something like donuts would be better in a neutral oil, verses lard or bacon grease and vegetable oil was around for quite some time. Here is an snip from an Atlantic article about Crisco.

Procter & Gamble filed a patent application for the new creation in 1910, describing it as "a food product consisting of a vegetable oil, preferably cottonseed oil, partially hydrogenated, and hardened to a homogeneous white or yellowish semi-solid closely resembling lard. The special object of the invention is to provide a new food product for a shortening in cooking." They came up with the name Crisco, which they thought conjured up crispness, freshness, and cleanliness.

Convincing homemakers to swap butter and lard for a new fat created in a factory would be quite a task, so the new form of food needed a new marketing strategy. Never before had Procter & Gamble -- or any company for that matter -- put so much marketing support or advertising dollars behind a product. They hired the J. Walter Thompson Agency, America's first fullservice advertising agency staffed by real artists and professional writers. Samples of Crisco were mailed to grocers, restaurants, nutritionists, and home economists. Eight alternative marketing strategies were tested in different cities and their impacts calculated and compared. Doughnuts were fried in Crisco and handed out in the streets. Women who purchased the new industrial fat got a free cookbook of Crisco recipes. It opened with the line, "The culinary world is revising its entire cookbook on account of the advent of Crisco, a new and altogether different cooking fat."
 
StevieR- no slaughter houses here in Daytona, so I would be using store bought lard.
Thirdeye- thanks for article, interesting. I'll ask my older sister if she remembers ,crisco or lard. I understand the first crisco used cottonseed oil.
Paul B
 
Any Latin supermercado with a butcher should carry lard or manteca. Ours has it near the chicharrones and you can buy it off the shelf as well.
 
That's too bad Paul wish you were closer or I'd give you some. It has to be refrigerated or frozen unfortunately, any that isn't has been treated.

I didn't know crisco was that old of a product. I grew up on a farm and without any money to speak of so my mom used lard for everything. We milked so fresh butter and cream were standard. Now I know how lucky I was to be so poor!
 
My Bavarian grandmother cooked with lard or goose fat in the "old" days, After the war she switched to Crisco and never went back... She was an amazing cook and baker, but I wasn't old enough to taste the products cooked with lard. Todays grocery store lard is homogenized, like crisco, so I don't know how it compares, real lard is actually good for you.

Also, her donuts were yeast donuts, no baking powder, and were fantastic.

I think you can get bags of duck fat from Restaurant depot, I bet that would work really good...
 
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