A very dear friend of mine found this while helping clean out a home for an estate sale. He snapped a picture, sent it to me and said "here, use this on your blog and ask people about it, make it a conversation starter".
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| Creamy Crustene Shortening Can |
So I did and I am! I'm looking at it and seeing that it was an 8 lb can of all-vegetable shortening from the Wesson company. Anyone ever heard of this brand? If it was used perhaps only in baking or maybe for something else? It's a great can and makes us wonder about products that were around once upon a time but have been forgotten over time.
Ironically, 2nd Man and I were talking about decorating the kitchen at the farm with old cans just like this. They are usually so vibrant and colorful and make great places to store new things. In a small house, something decorative AND storage related is always welcome. I always keep an eye out at thrift stores but sadly, I think a lot of things like this end up getting thrown away as trash.
I wish we could make the estate sale and pick it up, ha.
never heard of it but i am betting it made those biscuits CRUSTEE!
ReplyDeleteLOL I bet they were huh? :-)
Deleteor fried chicken which makes better sense since it is an 8 lb can!
ReplyDeleteYum, someone after my own heart, that might make a mean batch of fried chicken!
DeleteI've never heard of the brand. Given it's size I would guess it may have been sold to restaurants or for institutional cooking like in schools or hospitals. I wonder if the brand is particular to a region of the country and wasn't sold across the country the way many brands are now. I love decorative items that double as storage too.
ReplyDeleteGreat observation about the size, that makes sense. Things like this are great for storage huh?
DeleteI'm 75. As a kid I worked as a stock boy/sack boy/janitor/ and general flunkie in my parent's grocery store. I remember stocking Crustene, Crisco and other shortning such as Golden Lady, a butter colored shortning. Shortning of all kinds were very big sellers since - I may be wrong here but - I can't recall there being any liquid cooking oil until we started stocking Wesson Oil in the mid to late 50s. The Crustene we stocked was in a 3 pound can as I recall. The Crustene can in your photo was probably for commercial use in bakeries and such.
ReplyDeleteJim in Texas
Wow, thank you for this post!! Much appreciated Jim!! And Golden Lady? That's a great name too, I'll have to look that up. And a bakery makes perfect sense. Very great info, thank you very much! Don't be a stranger!! Come back and visit anytime!
DeleteVery pretty can - love the blue and yellow!
ReplyDeleteFrom some google research, Crustene was manufactured in Houston and San Antonio, Texas by the South Texas Cotton Oil Company. It was trademarked in 1945.
The colors are very eye catching. And thank you for your Google sleuthing! Sounds like it might have been a local thing huh? Nice!
DeleteI've never heard of it. Eight pounds is a lot of shortening.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
I hadn't either so ti was fun learning about it. And yes, eight pounds is a lot huh? Not sure we could use that much in months or maybe a year, ha.
DeleteBeautiful old can and in such great, almost mint condition for it's age.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 50's people done A lot of baking so used a lot of shortening but an 8lb size I would say was more for restaurants and bakery's
Definitely pretty. And I think we might end up getting it after all! I never thought about the size but that makes sense.
DeleteI love those old timey containers. The bonus was that the customer got the product plus a useful container to use. A far cry from today's packaging!
ReplyDeleteOh my isn't that the truth? Everything is so disposable now days. Sad. Of course even if there were tins like this today, don't you wonder how many people would keep them and reuse them or just throw them away anyway?
DeleteI have this antique chocolate jar; I looked up the company and they are in New York. I talked to someone and he said he has some of the jars around the office. So sometimes you can go web searching and find if the company still exists and get info.
ReplyDeleteGreat suggestion, thank you for that!!
DeleteI have a vintage lard bucket that my grandparents had tucked away in their house. It has a swinging handle on it and my mom said that they used them for lunch buckets when she was a child. My lard bucket sports a local Oregon brand - Mt. Emily - from the northeast part of the state.. Another popular brand was Spry - I have an old cookbook of all Spry recipes. Such fun!
ReplyDeleteWow, what a neat story. Lunch buckets! Can you imagine kids today doing that? LOL! And it's doubly neat when it's a local brand. Too cool! Thanks for sharing!
DeleteI have a recipe of my Mom's for cookies.
ReplyDeleteOne pound CREAMY CRUSTENE,
1 egg yolk beaten
3 cups sugar,
6 cups flour,
and juice of one orange.
Cream well CRUSTENE and sugar and egg yolk, orange juice, little flour at a time, beating well, better with the hand. Pat pieces size of half dollar, bake slowly to very light brown.
I didn't know what it was until I looked it up.
Because this was an anonymous comment, I missed it! Sorry, thank you so much for sharing this recipe, how cool is that? I'm assuming crisco is the modern day equivalent? Thanks again!!
DeleteI have a similar recipe....but I use vanilla or lemon juice plus I add milk if dough gets too dry. I also add a cup to 1.5 cups of pecan halves..My mother used the recipe. She passed away in 2005...at the age of 86, handed it down to me (I'm 65) and I've handed it down to my 39 year old daughter. My daughter and I just made a batch yesterday..yummy..
ReplyDeleteHello! And thank YOU for sharing this great memory. We are so going to try this, like I said up one comment I guess we'll have to use crisco instead, is that what you use? Thank you again for sharing!! Don't be a stranger, come back soon!
DeleteI have a ton of recipes from my grandmothers cook books that are this brand lol
ReplyDeleteNow that's cool too! We love old cookbooks too.
DeleteHow much would one of those can be worth
ReplyDeleteWe used that and it came with a small packet of yellow powder. We mixed that and that was our butter. After mixing we put it in a mold to make 1/4 pound bars like butter today.
ReplyDeleteI found a 50lb can at a yard sale I didn’t pay much for it I keep my flour in it and the can is similar to this one.
ReplyDelete