20

The attached picture is of a cookie recipe from my grandmother who passed a year ago. I would like to make the cookies, especially since they share my daughter's name, but there is one ingredient that I can't decode. It appears that the recipe calls for:

Nora's Cookies:

  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup ????
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 2 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1 tsp soda
  • salt
  • vanilla and lemon extract
  • flour to roll out

What might the 3rd ingredient be?

enter image description here

Jerry Stratton
  • 1,207
  • 9
  • 22
katahdin
  • 303
  • 2
  • 7
  • 8
    Beside the ingredient (which you now decoded) she seems to have forgotten mentioning the flour. You might be supposed to knead this all into so much flour that the consistency is "right" - which makes it very difficult to reproduce. – rumtscho Nov 03 '17 at 02:10
  • @rumtscho It looks like a pretty standard sugar cookie recipe, so probably about 3 cups of flour. – Ross Ridge Nov 03 '17 at 07:15
  • 1
    The thing I see missing is shortening. – GdD Nov 03 '17 at 11:41
  • 1
    @GdD that’s the “mystery ingredient”! Spry = shortening. – Stephie Nov 03 '17 at 14:01
  • Never heard of Spry. This reminds me of my grandmother's recipes which left out important things like flour, baking powder, etc. Security through obscurity I think @Stephie – GdD Nov 03 '17 at 14:04
  • @GdD LOL! I also have a few old recipes of the "add as much X as required". Unless you at least once watched the recipe being made and ideally touched and tasted it, you are in for a lot of experimentation - or you already have a lot of experience. – Stephie Nov 03 '17 at 14:14
  • Same here @Stephie, nana's recipes were more notes. – GdD Nov 03 '17 at 14:35
  • If y'all think following Grandma's recipe is hard, my sister has been translating some 16th century Hungarian cookbooks recently. So in addition to possibly-incomplete recipes that assume (wrongly) that you know what the dish is supposed to be like, there are issues of words that have changed meaning, or words that we simply can't decipher at all, because nobody alive today knows the equivalent of "oh, that was an old brand name for shortening". – Marti Nov 03 '17 at 17:27
  • 2
    @Stephie I think ignorance might be bliss here. If they don't what the end result is supposed to be like they won't know if the otherwise good cookies they've made are too thick/thin, chewy/crumbly or soft/crisp, etc. when compared to grandma's. – Ross Ridge Nov 03 '17 at 18:57

3 Answers3

32

It's "spry"... which is actually what it looks like.

Spry was apparently a brand name shortening.

This related question "Is there anything special about "homogenized" shortening?" recommends simply using any type of vegetable shortening, like Crisco.

Catija
  • 16,300
  • 8
  • 54
  • 86
  • Spry did a great job of making itself a household word. Their advertisements with Aunt Jenny were quite charming. But they lost out to Crisco in the 50s. – Joshua Engel Nov 08 '17 at 00:03
20

The mystery ingredient reads spry, which is a brand of vegetable shortening. It's probably not available any more, just use any other brand.

Stephie
  • 57,632
  • 7
  • 163
  • 213
1

Spry Vegetable Shortening. Spry was a brand of vegetable shortening produced by Lever Brothers starting in 1936. It was a competitor for Procter & Gamble's Crisco, and through aggressive marketing through its mascot Aunt Jenny had reached 75 percent of Crisco's market share. Just google it. enjoy your cookies

Bridget Haig
  • 11
  • 1
  • 2
    Bridget welcome to the site! There are a few issues with your answer: 1. You are simply copying the first few sentences from Wikipedia, without mentioning the origin. That's not ok. You may quote other sources, but please give the source. Also, if you are *only* copying text, we consider it not really "your" answer. 2. Answering "just google it" is not an answer. Often people *have* googeled before asking here and in this case, the asker was also unsure how to read the word. And, as a side note, we are often one of the first google hits when people have cooking questions! (And proud of it!) – Stephie Nov 07 '17 at 21:25
  • You should take the [tour] and browse our [help] to learn a bit more about how the site works. Once you have gained just a bit reputation ("points"), you will start to get more and more privileges. Again: welcome! – Stephie Nov 07 '17 at 21:27