Cornish Saffron Bread
“In Cornwall, saffron bread is made on special occasions throughout the year, but in Western Maryland it became distinctly associated with Christmas.”
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Swedish Salad
With parts of Scandinavia so far north that the dark days of winter are endless, its no wonder that the region has rich December holiday traditions. While some of the old Norse Yule symbology made its way into Christmas around the world, other customs remain specific and regional. St. Lucia Day is a particularly iconic…
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Tea Punch, O. H. W. Hunter
According to Wikipedia, the word for punch comes from the sanskrit word for “five.” The drink was once made up of five components: water, citrus, alcohol, sugar, and “spice”. According to punch historian David Wondrich, the spice in question could be anything from “nutmeg or tea to ambergris.” (Hey that rhymes!) The flavors of this…
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Unsurpassed Doughnuts, Elizabeth Staats
Elizabeth Staats (1852-1933, Kent County) collected recipes – hundreds of them. The collection started with a scrapbook Staats inherited from her mother Mary Griffith (1829-1892), whose original book contains handwritten recipes for food as well as things like soap and a “cure for cholera.” Staats finished that book before compiling the second book of over…
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Eggplant Fried in Batter, Alice Brown
“In a very real sense, ‘Maryland’s Way’ is Alice Brown’s Way.” – Tom Coakley, The Capital, Annapolis, 1975 Last month, I finished reading Michael Twitty’s book “The Cooking Gene,” and I was planning to write a whole post about it. I found myself basically at a loss to convey any meaningful context other than simply…
