Month: June 2022

Sponge Orange Cake, Ladies Aid Society, Church of the Holy Comforter

One of the many changes that the pandemic caused in me was a reversal of my austere policy on hard-copies of cookbooks. Where once I had been donating my more rare books and avoiding paying for anything I could view in a library, I suddenly had the urge to build up my home collection more and more. Donations and acquisitions have nearly doubled the amount of books I have on hand.

One of the books I purchased is one of the earliest books that I had access to digitally, a slim 1884 fund-raising cookbook from Baltimore called “The Favorite Receipt Book and Business Directory,” produced by the Ladies Aid Society of the Church of the Holy Comforter.

The book is disappointingly anonymous, but the advertisements, which the book promotes as a feature, are plentiful and interesting.

Ads are sometimes the most illuminating part of a cookbook like this. Some books have a lot of ads that demonstrate a whole neighborhood’s worth of local businesses, like a phone book. It can present a window into what kind of goods were available. Ads for grocers offer insight into where the church’s women might shop. Ads for appliances show what would be the cutting edge kitchen equipment.

Continue reading “Sponge Orange Cake, Ladies Aid Society, Church of the Holy Comforter”

“Fudge-It,” Mary Pat Clarke

Writing about contemporary politicians invites commentary on grievances, which makes me hesitate to make these kinds of recipes. As a resident of Baltimore, it is hard to imagine how history will look from the future. I imagine some more objective version of myself reading over these accomplishments and failures, but honestly, even Baltimore politics of the 70s and 80s leave me a little bewildered.

Still, if constituent services is any measure of a councilperson’s effectiveness then there is little debating that Mary Pat Clarke had a long and successful career. A Baltimore Sun article about her December 2020 retirement belabored that point. A summary of her political career was bracketed with statements about how she would be remembered most for “fixing prosaic problems for residents.” Filling potholes and restoring streetlights is pretty uncontroversial.

Clarke was born Providence, Rhode Island in 1941. After earning degrees from Immaculata College and the University of Pennsylvania, she ended up in Baltimore with her family in the late 60s. According to a Sun article from when she was elected President of the Greater Homewood Community Corporation in 1971, Clarke then lived with her four children in the Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood.

After her election to Greater Homewood Community Corporation, Clarke was a regular fixture in the Baltimore Sun’s local news pages. GHCC operated a children’s summer day camp, organized Youth Corp cleanups of Wyman Park, and organized programming for Greater Homewood’s senior citizens.

Clarke’s husband J. Joseph Clarke had been a delegate who lost his seat to Joseph R. Raymond. In 1975, Mary Pat beat out Raymond for the New Democratic Club endorsement for city council. The Sun covered the endorsement as a bit of revenge. J. Joseph Clarke went on to be a developer in Baltimore. His company is responsible for many projects, including the demolition of the historic Southern Hotel.

After winning the council race, Mary Pat’s career in Baltimore City Politics lasted 45 more years. Those years included a mayoral run, work on various committees, two stints as Council President (and an earlier failed campaign for that office), a clash with the Harborplace Hooters, and various bills and stances, some worthy and some ill-advised. Which are which is up to your own discretion.

The Evening Sun, 1973. Caption: “MRS. CLARKE—With John, Susan, Erin and Jenny”
Continue reading ““Fudge-It,” Mary Pat Clarke”

Gumbo Filé, M. E. M’Ilhenny, Avery Island, Louisiana

“Gumbo Filet Powder is made of the tender young leaves of the sassafras,” wrote Jane Gilmor Howard in her 1873 cookbook Fifty Years in A Maryland Kitchen, “picked in the Spring, and dried carefully in the shade as you do herbs; powdered fine, bottled and corked tight. It is much used in New Orleans.”

This explanation was doing one better than Howard’s relative Mary Lloyd Tyson had done in her 1870 cookbook The Queen of the Kitchen. Tyson’s recipe, for “Gumbo Fillet,” didn’t presume that the ingredient needed any explaining. “Stir in 1 table-spoon of fillet, if it is fresh,” she wrote, “if not, put 2.”

Howard copied many recipes from The Queen of the Kitchen, but this was not one of them. Tyson’s recipe was pretty open-ended. She suggested readers add “as many oysters as you please” and advised that “Gumbo can be made of either ducks, pigeons, or cold turkey.” Jane Howard settled on a quart of oysters and a chicken.

Gumbo recipes containing okra are plentiful in Maryland cookbooks and recipe manuscripts dating back to the early 1800s, but Gumbo Filé is a bit of a specialty item. Elizabeth Ellicott Lea included an okra gumbo in her 1859 book Domestic Cookery, but as far as she knew or cared, sassafras was best used in a poultice (also containing bread crumbs and milk. If you have a flesh wound you might want to steer clear of Lea.)
When Tyson presented “Gumbo Fillet” in Queen of the Kitchen, she commented “This is a favorite dish in the Southern States.”

This may be an example of the mystique of antebellum cooking and lifestyle that was implied in the recipes of Tyson and Howard, who both had plenty of Confederate ties. In 1898, Mrs. W. A. Fisher contributed a recipe each for gumbo with filé and okra for Recipes Old and New, a cookbook produced to benefit the Confederate Relief Bazaar.

While one theory of the origin of the name “gumbo” traces the word to West African words for okra, in the language of the Choctaw people, sassafras powder is called “kombo.” That raises too much confusion for me to write much more about gumbo at present.

Three recipes from a small envelope in the Frick Family Papers, Maryland Center for History and Culture, MS 2307, Box 10

What attracted me to this recipe was the name signed at the bottom of the page on which it was written.

Continue reading “Gumbo Filé, M. E. M’Ilhenny, Avery Island, Louisiana”
Scroll to top
error: Content is protected !!