Month: May 2019

Superior Lemon Pie, Julia McPherson White

  • superior lemon pie slice

It may surprise you to know that one of the most popular recipes in the Old Line Plate database doesn’t contain oysters, crab, or even chicken. As I’ve spent hours poring over community cookbooks and dusty manuscripts, I started to notice a ubiquitous pie that appeared in cookbooks – often in multiple forms. As of May 2019, I’ve collected 170 recipes for lemon pie.

For comparison, I have about 50 recipes for apple pies. 37 for White Potato Pie. I haven’t indexed every Maryland cookbook, but I don’t think that white potato is going to catch up to lemon any time soon.

I was recently at the Pratt Library paging through “How We Cook in Salisbury,” a late 1930’s cookbook put out by the St. Peter’s Church (in Salisbury, obviously), when I came across an especially amusing arrangement of lemon pie recipes.

One page had a recipe from Mrs. David Dallas, for “Lemon Pie.” Directly below that recipe was one from Mrs. A. Percy White, entitled “Superior Lemon Pie.”

  • How we cook in Salisbury, edited by the Woman’s guild of St.Peter’s church, Salisbury at the Enoch Pratt Library
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Pot Pie of Wild Mushrooms, Old Angler’s Inn

I wasn’t surprised to learn that the Old Angler’s Inn doesn’t exactly date to the 19th century. Rather, the building in Potomac was built on the site of a previous Anglers’ clubhouse that had burned down in 1896. The current building, now a restaurant, dates to just after 1900. Perfectly respectable.

I was surprised to learn that the story of a nearby gold-mine, operated by a Union soldier, was absolutely true. The ruins of the mine still sit near the C&O Canal, just a mile away from the Old Angler’s Inn. The mine even has a historical marker validating its existence.

Legend has it that the Anglers’ Association, whose nearby clubhouse inspired the Inn’s name, boasted several U.S. Presidents as members.

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Interview: Laurie Boucher, “Baltimore home cook”

Laurie Boucher told me that she always knew she wanted to study law. The vocation brought her from Pennsylvania to Baltimore, where she now resides. When Boucher needed more time to take care of family, she scaled back on lawyering, enrolled in culinary school, and began to master the art of pasta-making. As she shared her pasta creations on instagram, along with detailed information and instructions, she began to acquire a few thousand enthusiastic followers. At some point I became one of them!

Laurie’s instagram is a well of inspiration to try new things and to have fun. It’s even resulted in her offering some pasta classes. I knew that meeting Laurie would be a great way to get back into doing some interviews for Old Line Plate and I knew I could not turn down an opportunity to learn the technique of laminating herbs into fresh pasta. Problem is, I was a little intimidated. How could I keep up with a lawyer whose idea of relaxation was to spend so many dedicated hours mastering intricate techniques?

When I stepped into Boucher’s kitchen, stocked with tools for pasta and more, I was instantly put at ease. Yes, I met a highly driven and self-disciplined person. What I found beyond that was someone a lot like me – a person whose self-driven need to follow a passion on one’s own terms has allowed them to share information freely; a fellow introvert who has found that food can be a way to reach out and connect with others – even online.

  • Laurie Boucher in her home kitchen
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Holland Carrot Bread, Jane Hollingsworth Voshell

This spring, I decided to swallow my doubts and get a community garden plot.

Hopefully, in future seasons, this will enable me to try out some forgotten historic vegetable cultivars. For now, I’m starting simple with a patch of hot peppers. Seeing how I can’t expect a harvest until late summer, imagine my surprise when I found edible vegetables waiting in the garden. It seems that someone abandoned some carrots last year and they over-wintered. While they could have been better cared for, I found plenty of useable ‘carrot meat’ and greens.

The purple tops on some of the larger carrot roots hinted at the varied and colorful history of the carrot. Some historians believe that carrots in antiquity were primarily white, yellow, or purple. The myth goes that orange carrots were bred by the Dutch to honor William of Orange, but that has little evidence behind it. Carrot historians aren’t really promoting that story any longer, although the Dutch did cultivate orange carrots. Unlike many vegetables that have been bred for appearances, carrots haven’t suffered much nutritionally as a result. The preference for deep orange carrots has come along with an increase in Vitamin A content.

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