Before there were ethical questions about organic vegetables, GMOs or factory farming, American consumers were faced with the ultimate ethical consumption conflict: slavery.
As we have seen with the issue of baking powder, regional and cultural adoption of foods was sometimes influenced by commitment to the abolitionist movement. While this can mean an aversion to the labor involved in making the food, as with beaten biscuits, it can also mean the labor involved in growing the ingredients, as with sugar or rice.
Rice made its way to this continent along with the enslaved West African people whose ancestors had domesticated and cultivated it thousands of years earlier.
1871 Baltimore Sun
In 1648, a pamphlet on Virginia (published for the interest of the English in London) reported that governor “Sir William” [Berkeley] procured rice and ordered it to be sown in Virginia, where “it prospered gallantly.”
More rice was planned to be sown the following year, “for we perceive the ground and climate is very proper for it as our negroes affirm, which in their country is most of their food, and very healthful for our bodies.”
While growing rice as additional subsistence for family or for better financial autonomy is one thing, growing rice for commercial trade is another altogether. David Shields’ “Southern Provisions” quotes an 1853 account of Carolina slaves engaged in the process of farming rice. Working in “gangs” of around 20 people, the enslaved not only sowed and harvested the rice, but performed extensive irrigation and land preparation. Failure to meet work quotas or comply was enforced with whippings and solitary confinement.
The Chesapeake region may not have had rice culture to this extent, but rice was certainly grown in the 1600′s through 1800′s. The 1860 agricultural census has a column for pounds of rice produced by farming households. According to Barbara Wells Sarudy in “Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake”, sixteenth-century planter John Beale Boardley touted the rice harvested in the loamy Annapolis-area soil as being “preferred to the best imported rice.”
Rice dishes certainly proliferated in Maryland cookbooks in the mid-to-late 1800s, with over a dozen recipes for rice waffles alone. For this post, I worked with a recipe from the 1897 “Up-to-Date Cookbook” via “Maryland’s Way”. Some recipes use rice flour or pulverize the cooked rice into the batter, but this one did not. Once again, authenticity went out the window in my ‘low-waste’ kitchen – in this case I used leftover wild rice. In 1897, the rice in question might have been something similar to the Carolina Gold rice profiled in great depth in “Southern Provisions.”
Even as rice cultivation in Maryland waned in favor of tobacco or corn, the Confederate-leaning Marylanders like cookbook author Jane Gilmor Howard may have had less ethical concerns about the consumption of the rice that was being transported by train from the South. Although she came from an abolitionist Quaker family, Elizabeth Ellicott Lea featured sixteen rice recipes in her cookbook “Domestic Cookery.” She may have had access to regionally grown rice, or perhaps she consumed with moral conflict.
Recipe:
2 Cups flour
.5 Teaspoon salt
.5 Teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
2 Cups buttermilk
.5 Cup cooked rice
1 Tablespoon melted butter, plus more for cooking
Sift together flour, salt and soda. Beat egg yolks and add to buttermilk. Add rice and butter. Combine buttermilk mixture with dry ingredients; then fold in well beaten egg whites. Bake in buttered waffle iron.
Recipe adapted from “Maryland’s Way, the Hammond-Harwood House Cookbook”
According to cocktail historian David Wondrich in his book “Imbibe!”, Fish House Punch should be “made a mandatory part of every Fourth of July.” If the punch’s provenance is indeed as historic as people claim it is, then it may well deserve priority over cans of beer that say “America” on them. And with a tart dose of citrus plus the requisite gigantic cube of ice, it’s certainly a refreshing Summer concoction.
Fish House Punch is said to have originated with the “State in Schuylkill”, a Philadelphia rod and gun club founded in 1732. Legends have it that it was served in a bowl large enough to baptize a baby in.
I was skeptical of this origin story at first, with the prohibitive cost of citrus. But this was an illustrious club that through the years hosted no less than George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette and Chester Arthur. According to Wondrich’s other book “Punch,” punch containing citrus and rum was a pricy status drink by the late seventeenth century. Fish House Punch began to make even more sense when I thought of the drink as a way to preserve the lemon juice itself – some recipes call for aging the punch a year or more.
Citrus got a boost in affordability and availability in the 1800s, first with the U.S. acquisition of formerly Spanish territories, and then with the building of railways to distribute fruit to cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Recipes for Fish House Punch began to appear in regional papers in the 1860s.
In 1898, the Baltimore Sun praised the selection of beverage recipes found in Mrs. Charles Marshall’s Confederate relief benefit cookbook “Recipes Old and New.” The Sun informed readers that in the book they would find recipes for eggnog, cherry bounce, Confederate punch, Roman Punch, and the “difficult to obtain” formula for Philadelphia Fish House Punch.
Single serving Fish House Punch, Afro-American,1939
That Philadelphia Fish House Punch recipe, contributed by Philadelphian Mrs. George Dallas Dixon, contains some unusual inclusions including green tea and red Curaçao. It is nearly the oldest Fish House Punch recipe published in a Maryland cookbook – but not quite. The 1897 “Up-To-Date Cookbook of Tested Recipes” from Montgomery County contains a more traditional recipe contributed by Mrs. J. Maury Dove. Her husband was a coal company president who had done business in Philadelphia so they too may have acquired the recipe directly.
The recipe I ultimately used, from “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland,” comes from Mrs. Charles H. Tilghman of Gross Coate. (More on Gross Coate in the stewed mushrooms recipe.)
This recipe is nearly identical to the one printed in “Imbibe!”, which originated from a Philadelphia lawyer and “must be considered authentic,” according to Wondrich. It is considered customary to serve this punch with one large ice block. I didn’t have the foresight to freeze a big hunk of ice, but I wasn’t even serving the punch out of a bowl, so I used store-bought ice.
The punch came out very sweet – I would recommend cutting the sugar by half or more – and the lack of real peach brandy prevents us from truly channeling the 18th-century “club man” vibe. Luckily the phony peach flavor of modern peach brandy kind of works here.
This Independence Day I may just have a glass or two of Fish House Punch before moving on to those beers.
Recipe:
2 pints lemon juice
.5 Pint Jamaican rum
.5 Pint brandy
.5 Pint peach brandy
2 Lb sugar
4.5 Pint water, including ice
Recipe adapted from “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland”
“If alum is something to be proud of why conceal it on the label in type as small as the law permits?” – Alum in Baking Powder, 1927, Royal Baking Powder Company
“Today, the Royal Company is manufacturing and selling a phosphate type of powder such as they condemned and classed as a mineral poison a few years ago.” – The Truth About Baking Powder, 1928, Calumet Baking Powder Company
The libraries of Johns Hopkins don’t always have much to offer when it comes to my research. This post was a rare exception. I found a lot of reports and books about baking powder in the Hopkins Sheridan Libraries. I soon learned that this is because it exists in the grey area between food, chemical, and – some once believed – toxin. It was a potential cause for medical concern.
I selected two books: “Alum in Baking Powder,” published by the Royal Baking Powder Company in 1927, and “The Truth About Baking Powder,” from the Calumet Baking Powder Company in 1928. The former is meant to dispel any bad publicity or residual rumors from a 1926 Federal Trade Commission Hearing regarding Royal Baking Powder and their crusade against the ingredient alum. The latter book is a rebuttal of the former, in which Calumet wants the reader to look at the cutthroat tactics of Royal and wonder “just what are you so afraid of, Royal Baking Powder?”
1911 Royal Baking Powder Advertisement
If that all seems confusing, its because it is. A new book, “Baking Powder Wars,” by Linda Civitello, chronicles the bumpy history of baking powder from convenient godsend to (alleged) public health menace to kitchen staple.
A lot of recipes in older cookbooks contain long-forgotten ingredients like pearlash and saleratus. I’ve always been struck by the ingenuity of cooks of that era, and the way that information and ingredients would disseminate around the country. In the case of these baking powder predecessors, they had some help from cookbook authors like Eliza Leslie and Amelia Simmons. Use of these leaveners marked further diversion from American cooking’s British roots.
“American women should be given more credit for what they created and for the chemical experiments they conducted in their kitchens. Even if pearlash was not revolutionary by itself – which it was – the accretion of innovation created a new American cuisine.” – Baking Powder Wars, Linda Civitello
Aside from chemical leaveners and yeast, you may recall that another traditional way to get air into breads, especially in Maryland, is to beat the hell out of the dough for a half hour or more. Performing this process definitely makes one think of the history of servitude and slavery in Maryland, and Civitello draws a connection between that and Eliza Leslie’s distaste for Maryland Biscuits, which Leslie deemed unwholesome (despite including the recipe in her book). Leslie’s Maryland contemporary, Elizabeth Ellicott Lea, also an abolitionist Quaker, simply declared that Maryland Biscuits are “very nice for tea.” But hey, as Leslie said “there’s not accounting for tastes.” (1)
Rumford Cook Book, probably 1895
Commercial baking powders were first developed in the mid-1800s, even before a reliable yeast was available to consumers. Housewives, cooks and bakers cultivated and maintained their own yeast. Between the different blends of flour, the variability of yeasts, and the makeshift baking powders, we can scarcely imagine the inconsistency of 19th century baked goods.
Regardless, according to Civitello, many women were skeptical of the chemicals, or else fiercely set in their independent ways. The burgeoning baking powder industry resorted to creative means to market their products to consumers.
The Royal Baking Powder Company released a cookbook in 1877, pushing their products with the allure of exciting new recipes. The book disparaged other baking powder formulas and offered hundreds of recipes featuring their product. (2)
As competition heated up, the war began. Royal promoted evidence that the ingredients in other baking powder formulations were responsible for indigestion. The most famous of this ‘evidence’ involved an 1880 study in which dogs were fed biscuits made with the different baking powder formulas – the Royal formula versus the “other leading brands” containing alum.
“Eight [alum baking powder] biscuits were given to dogs Nos. II and VI in the morning; in the afternoon dog No. II was very loose in his bowels, and dog No. VI very constipated. Five more biscuits were given in the afternoon and eight more the following morning, part of which were eaten. Both the dogs then were extremely constipated and apparently quite sick, although they did not vomit. To-day dog No. IV, in perfect health, was then given three biscuits… the dog became quite sick and vomited. In the afternoon and the next morning more biscuits were given him, but he would not eat.” – The Sanitarian, Volume 8, 1880
Very scientific. Loose stools AND constipation?!?! Even a DOG wouldn’t eat those biscuits!! Well I say! I’m smarter than a dog!
Nonetheless, the baking powder competition waged on; right on up to the Federal Trade Commission hearing in 1926.
Rumsford Chemical Works, whose creator Eben Horsford pioneered the original commercial baking powder formula, produced their own cookbook in 1895. Newspapers around the country advertised a “New Pastry Cook Book” by Baltimore Cooking School principal “L. A. Willis”(3) which could be obtained, for free, from Rumsford Chemical Works if you sent in a label (aka your ‘proof of purchase’) from Horsford Bread Preparation (an early self-rising enriched flour).
Rumsford was wisely capitalizing on the rising popularity of cooking instructors, and the cooking instructors capitalized right back.
Lida Ames Willis had been a pupil of Sarah Tyson Rorer, and made good on her credentials with a healthy amount of endorsements. She assisted with Gas & Electric company promotions, and also endorsed Knox Gelatine and Cottolene shortening. Alongside Rorer, Marion Harland, and a few other cooking instructors, Willis contributed recipes to a 1914 book called “Home Helps” – a promotion for Cottolene.
The similar refrains from Cottolene about purity and indigestion make one wonder if there aren’t larger forces at play than some unsafe ingredient in baking powder.
Why did people used to suffer from so much indigestion? Well, for starters, nearly any ingredient in a recipe could have been adulterated or spoiled. Refrigeration was not widespread, canning practices were not standardized, and unscrupulous corporate activity was rampant. Maybe people had un-diagnosed sensitivities to gluten or FODMAPs. Maybe e. coli was all over everything (ew). But also… maybe humans just get a lot of indigestion?
Safety concerns are one of the pillars of marketing to this day – GMOs being just one obvious example. And my Rumsford Baking Powder tin assures me that the product is aluminum free.
The convenience of baking powder didn’t eliminate the use of yeast, or even the tradition of beaten biscuits. Still, we have baking powder to thank for a world of cakes with a light texture and a “faint metallic trace of bitterness” that “unfortunately, Americans grew to love.” (4)
If you’re wondering what happened to the dogs who ate biscuits made with Royal Baking Powder, well: “each dog was given as many biscuits as he would eat… Their bowels were not in the least affected.” Those dogs ate a ton of delicious biscuits “with appetite,” and their stools were perfect, which is more than I can say about my own dog who eats food that is made for dogs.
Recipe:
2 heaping teaspoons baking powder
1 Teaspoon salt
1 Quart flour
2 oz butter plus more for spreading on cake
cold milk
sugared strawberries
whipped cream
Sift 2 heaping teaspoonfuls Rumford Yeast Powder, and 1 teaspoonful salt with 1 quart flour. Rub in 2 ounces butter and moisten to a very soft dough with cold milk. Mix quickly and lightly; pat out into a large round cake 2 inches thick; place in a large, square baking-pan and bake in a very quick oven 20 minutes. While hot pull apart; spread both halves with good, sweet butter, not pressing but dropping it on with a knife; spread the lower half with a thick layer of slightly crushed, sugared strawberries; put on the top crust, dust with sugar, heap with sweetened, whipped cream and garnish with a few large berries. Serve at once, and cut with a hot knife.
Recipe from The Rumford Bread and Pastry Cook by Lida A. Willis
I think I made this batter too wet. I didn’t bother making an adaptation of this recipe because you can find your own strawberry shortcake recipes out there. But I would have used twice as much strawberries or made half as much cake, and also maybe less milk.
(2) A 1920 version is available online. “ Housekeepers who have always used Royal Baking Powder with utmost satisfaction are sometimes misled into experimenting with baking powders containing questionable ingredients. “
(3) Spelled “Leida” in this book, her name appears more often as Lida and Lida is the name used in the census
(4) Culinary historian Karen Hess quoted in “Baking Powder Wars”. This book has much more history going on including corporate espionage and Clabber Girls trouble with the KKK – check it out if you’re into that kinda thing!
Hamburgers are one of those foods that are possibly under-represented in cookbooks due to their sheer simplicity. Although recipes for “hamburgh sausage” or “hamburg steaks” appear in cookbooks dating as far back as 1758, most of the hamburger recipes in my Maryland cookbooks come from the 1950s and 1960s. It was a time when there was a little more experimenting going on in home kitchens, and these recipes tend to have some special touch or sauce.
“Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen” (1962), the source for this recipe, also contains recipes for “Belmost Sauce” and “Aloha Sauce” for hamburgers. “Hamburgers Diane” is a twist on Steak Diane, a popular dish at the time which, according to Wikipedia, “was considered dated by 1980.” Steak Diane’s origin isn’t entirely clear but it is often attributed to Chef Beniamino Schiavon of the Drake Hotel in New York. Table-side flambé, as seen in this recipe, was a popular fad in the mid-20th century.
Washington College yearbook, 1959
One completely baffling aspect to this recipe was an instruction to salt the pan and heat until the salt turns brown. I’m pretty sure that salt does not brown? Maybe the salt used in 1962 had some different impurities? I honestly don’t know so I ignored that instruction.
These burgers would be fine on a bun (brioche perhaps? to keep it fancy…) but I already had the wild rice thing going so we went bun-less.
All in all it was a tasty burger, but that is always going to come down to the quality of the meat and how you salt and cook it… not some gimmicky sauce.
The recipe contributor, Lynette Morgan Nielsen was born Esther Lynette Morgan in Montreal, 1912. Her mother, Esther Judson appears to have come from money.
Dealth of Lynette Nielsen’s grandfather, 1910, Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY)
Lynette’s grandfather Edward Barker Judson, Jr., according to one obituary, “was one of the grand men of Syracuse.” He was “the son of a wealthy father and the inheritor of a large fortune from his uncle” and became president of First National Bank of Syracuse. At some point Lynette married Orsen N. Nielsen, a U.S. Diplomat. The two traveled the world as he served in Russia, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Iran and Australia. Orsen Nielsen retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1952 and the family settled in Centreville.
There, Lynette served as a trustee of Washington College. An annual art prize was named in her honor. She contributed to Atkins Arboretum at Tuckahoe State Park, and a mental health services annex of Queen Anne’s County Health Department, which was named in her honor. She passed away in 1984.
Lynette’s well-traveled and philanthropic life is yet another example of the many citizens who contributed to “Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen,” now a classic Maryland cookbook whose reputation has spread throughout the state.
Recipe:
1 Lb good beef, ground
2 Tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
2 Tablespoons cognac
chives or onion pieces
butter
Shape beef lightly into cakes, sprinkle with pepper and press pepper into cakes. Let stand 30 minutes. Sprinkle a light layer of salt over bottom of a heavy frying pan. Turn heat to high, and when pan is hot [or when “salt begins to brown” according to the recipe??] add hamburgers.
Cook until well browned on each side, reduce heat and cook until done to taste. Place a pat of butter on each burger, pour cognac over top and set ablaze.
Sprinkle cakes with chives or dried onions before serving.
Recipe adapted from “Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen”
I recently found this 1954 cookbook at the Pratt Library, “Secrets of Southern Maryland Cooking,” with the somewhat creepy subtitle “(How to Keep Daddy Home).” It’s 132 pages are filled with interesting illustrations and handwritten recipes – including stuffed ham, a gravy-less Maryland Fried Chicken, and some more unusual items such as advocaat.
The handwriting and illustrations are done by several people – and some recipes are practically illegible. Rather than St. Mary’s or Calvert, this book actually hails from the somewhat under-represented (on my website) Charles County.
The book benefitted the Charles County Children’s Aid Society, whose mission is to “improve the quality of life for struggling Charles County families with children under age 18 by providing them with the basic necessities of life including, but not limited to, clothing, food, educational classes, recreational activities and holiday assistance.” The organization was founded in 1934 by a group of women hoping to help struggling families affected by the Great Depression. At the time, the organization facilitated services that would become the purview of Charles County Social Services, including foster care and adoption services.
The wild rice recipe comes care of an Anne Hamilton. A little bit of census research leads me to believe that she may have been Anne Offutt Hamilton (b. 1912) from Montgomery County. She married a Charles County man, Francis Patrick Hamilton, and she passed away in 1988. A WWII veteran, Francis may have descended from Captain James Neale, one of the early English settlers of Southern Maryland.
That’s a lot of maybes. Tasty rice dish from a neat cookbook. Copies of the book can be found in the Enoch Pratt, Frederick, and Southern Maryland libraries.
Recipe:
2 Cups wild rice
3 Tablespoons salt
.75 to 1 Cup butter
1 Cup chopped celery
1 Cup mushroom
.75 Cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic
Cook rice per package instructions. Sauté in ¾ to 1 cup butter:1 cup chopped celery1 cup mushrooms1/2 to ¾ cup chopped onion1 clove garlicAdd to rice when it is tender and has absorbed the water. Season with salt and pepper and keep warm until ready to serve.
Stations of the Cross at Mount Carmel illustration in cookbook
