Legend has it that Clara May Downey discovered the site of the Olney Inn when she got a flat tire near the 1875 Montgomery County farmhouse. It was the mid-1920s and Downey was considering following many women into the business of operating a tearoom.
Instead of a dainty tearoom catered towards women, Downey’s restaurant (it never operated as a true inn) would become a local institution that operated for 50 years. It is still fondly remembered today.
Baltimore certainly didn’t have a monopoly on the grandiose “Welcome to the South” style of dining that was fashionable in the early 20th century. Montgomery County, though once home to many abolitionist Quakers, also had many citizens who “did not forget their Southern Bonds.*” Downey’s restaurant offered up Southern-style hospitality – complete with house-cured hams and produce grown on the Inn’s sprawling grounds.
“Christmas passed over much as the day usually does. There was a glorious destruction of egg-nog, apple toddy, whiskey punch… turkeys, geese, ducks… mince pies, apple pies, pumpkin pies… dough nut, short cake, long cake, pound cake, ginger cake… Pleasure was the order of the day… There were a few rows, which was quite natural; not more, however, than was required to fill up the scene to the life.” – The Baltimore Sun, December 1838
In 1863, one frequent advertiser in the Sun specifically linked their December merchandise with two holiday beverages. “EGG-NOG AND APPLE TODDY”, read an ad advertising fine brandies, wines, “and a small quantity of the ‘Nations Pride,’ Monongahela Rye Whisky.” The availability of figs, nuts, canned fruits and the like is tacked on to the advertisement as an afterthought.
During the holiday season, apple toddy was most often mentioned alongside eggnog, enjoyed at the festivities of the social clubs, a requisite part of Christmas reverie (and sometimes mayhem.)
As the temperance movement gained traction, traditions began to change.
Baltimore’s Front Street Theatre had undergone “extensive alterations and improvements” in 1850. Carpenters Carnan & Eckert built out a parquet for standing room theatergoers. “Skillful” painter John Delpher was hired to apply a fresh coat of paint. New curtains were hung, and 600 cushioned seats with spring-backs were installed.
A decade and a half later, Abraham Lincoln would be nominated as the republican presidential candidate in “the old Front Street Theatre”; through the years the theater was scene of the occasional theft or shooting. Those events would fade from memory long before the concerts that necessitated the 1850 renovations.
Hundreds of Baltimore citizens gathered in the rain on Monday December 9th, 1850 for a chance at tickets to see Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale,” live in concert. Front row tickets went for the modern equivalent of a few thousand dollars. Many would-be concertgoers were dismayed that many of the remaining tickets – about 1900 in all, were quickly bought up for resale.
For the next few days, ads appeared in the Baltimore Sun, offering tickets to see Jenny Lind. Businesses that didn’t have tickets to sell advertised hats to wear to the concert, “Jenny Lind Bouquets” for the concert, “Jenny Lind Candy” bearing “a perfect likeness of the divine songstress.”
Among the recipes in 19th century cookbooks, you’ll often find advertisements for hats and gloves, ovens, groceries, jewelry, horse accessories and more. Between the ads and the recipes, you could get a sense of a gilded life in the city, full of consumer longing and delicious viands. What is easy to forget- especially with the recipes distracting you with rich gravies and dainty cakes- is that in 19th century life, death loomed large.
Stories of disease, food poisoning, criminal and accidental violence are splashed across the “local matters” in old newspapers. In the back pages of many old cookbooks you will find the dark shadow of “pure historic cooking” in the form of home remedies for cholera, broken bones, and even cancer. An untested recipe for cake could lead to disappointment and waste. An untested recipe for “cure for Dysentery” could lead to death.
Many scholars have been careful to point out that this familiarity with death did not lessen the grief and trauma that people experienced. A family plot in Greenmount cemetery filled with little granite lambs reflects a life of tragedy and human endurance.
Despite her wealthy background, Lea’s culinary style is fairly rural. Her book contains a lot of information on bread baking, calling bread “the most important article of food.” She included instructions for baking bread in a dutch-oven, brick oven, or a stove. The brick oven instructions are particularly detailed:
“If you have a large family, or board the laborers of a farm, it is necessary to have a brick oven so as to bake but twice a week… If you arrange every thing with judgment, half a dozen loaves of bread, as many pies or puddings, rusk, rolls or biscuit may be baked at the same time. [To rise bread overnight] the sponge should be made up at four o’clock in the afternoon.
You should have a large tin vessel with holes in the top, to keep bread in; in this way, it will be moist at the end of the week in cool weather.
Coarse brown flour or middlings makes very sweet light bread…
It is very important to have good oven-wood split fine, and the oven filled with it as soon as the baking is out [so it stays] ready and dry. Early in the morning, take out half the wood, and spread the remainder over the oven… light a few sticks in the fire… when it is burnt to coals, stir them about well with a long-handled shovel made for the purpose.
When it looks bright on the top and sides, it is hot enough; let the coals lay all over the bottom till near the time of putting in the bread…
Put in the bread first, and then the pies; if you have a plain rice pudding to bake, it should be put in the middle of the front, and have two or three shovels of coal put round it… pies made of green fruit will bake in three-quarters of an hour. Rusks, or rolls, take about half an hour.
When all is taken out, fill the oven with wood ready for the next baking.”
Bread was obviously a central part of her culinary routine. In addition to managing the baking, this would entail maintaining the live yeast cultures, and possibly included blending flours to suit her needs, from locally available types of wheat.
Elizabeth Ellicott Lea
For yeast, Lea preferred hop yeast, made by feeding yeast with a slurry of flour and water boiled with hops. Yeast could also be made with potatoes, corn flour or milk.
When I saw that some people from the Baltibrew group were doing a wild yeast capture, my interest was piqued. I followed the blog all summer as they went through the phases of attempting to isolate wild yeast strains, examining them, and ultimately brewing beer with them. Of the initial sixteen attempts, four captures were free enough of mold or airborne contaminants to experiment with. The strain I received came from a tree in Locust Point.
