Month: May 2023

Try and Guess Salad, Mrs. James F. Colwill

The mere concept of aspic invites a gag reflex in many people. Add to that any wacky combination of ingredients and you have a recipe tailor-made to go viral for yuks (and yucks.)

When I first saw the recipe for “Try and Guess Salad,” my first reaction was not disgust. It was deja vu. I thought I recognized it from a local cookbook. I wasn’t sure which one. Who knows how many cookbooks I read in a year? The recipe was being shared, as so many are these days, because it sounds gross. Raspberry gelatin with stewed tomatoes… and horseradish?

And then, for a few days, “Try and Guess Salad” was everywhere. Food-centric Facebook groups and twitter accounts shared it, and everyone seemed to bond over their horror. On the reddit thread where the recipe made an appearance, commenters expressed their disdain in no uncertain terms.

Not me, of course. I imagined meat with currant sauce. Tangy horseradish. It didn’t sound great but I didn’t “wish I could unsee it” or whatever.

I searched the names of the people accompanying the image, Mrs. J. Stuart Cassilly and Helen Luedke, and I did indeed find Maryland connections. The scanned cookbook page on the internet appeared to be from a 1980s cookbook.

“The Pleasure of Your Company”, 1967

When I dug further, I found the recipe mentioned in the Baltimore Sun in the 1960s, when it appeared in “The Pleasure of Your Company,” a cookbook put out by St. Thomas’ Church in Garrison Forest (Owings Mills) in 1967. Contributor Mrs. James F. Colwill, neé Marion Jane Tuttle, was born in 1912 in Hastings, Minnesota before her family moved to Maryland. She married James Frederick Colwill in 1941 and died in 1988. Her “Try & Guess Salad” endured for decades – it also appeared in St. Thomas’ 1987 cookbook, “Two and Company.”

Mrs. Colwill’s Minnesota origins aside, I was convinced I had a Maryland original on my hands. I couldn’t find “Try and Guess Salad” in any earlier form elsewhere… until I thought to search for “Mystery Salad.”

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Tomato Aspic at the Woman’s Industrial Exchange

Amy Rosenkrans and I stood outside of the Woman’s Industrial Exchange building at 333 North Charles, looking at the artwork in the window. In 2020, the iconic but neglected 200-year-old building had been given to the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center. The inside was now filled with stories of Maryland suffragists, scientists, and leaders. The window showcased the wooden artworks of Paula Darby, the latest artist in a rotation of women artists put on display facing the hustle and bustle of Charles Street.

Layne Bosserman opened the front door towards us and announced “I found something.”

Although I was theoretically making my way out of the building, I couldn’t resist ducking back in to see Bosserman splaying several manila folders onto a table. Inside the first was a document thanking Julia Roberts for dining at the Exchange. There were several papers regarding charity events, an old photograph of the building, and a typewritten list of the Board of Directors. Most excitingly for my purposes were several menus. A luncheon featuring the Woman’s Exchange Tea Room’s famous tomato aspic and chicken salad platter, hot rolls, lemon tarts, and pumpkin pie. Some breakfast specials: eggs and bacon, homemade biscuits, assorted juices, “petite pancakes,” coffee cake, and peach upside-down cake. Most items could be had for under a dollar.

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7-Up Cake, Georgia L. Cannon & Bernice Baine

Georgia L. Cannon of Delmar seems like she would have been a good one to have on your side. In 1983, when Delmar councilman Ed Feeney was asked to resign, Cannon penned a passionate letter to the Salisbury Daily Times. “Thank the Lord for someone who will stand firm in his beliefs,” she wrote. “I have heard Ed Feeney pray many times in our church for his fellow councilmen. I wonder if any one of them has ever said a prayer for him?”

From newspaper articles, I have a hard time grasping the finer points of Feeney’s scandal. I only know that Cannon had his back.

In April of that year, she wrote to the paper to honor a neighbor who had died. “Josh [Gibbs] was a familiar figure around town mowing lawns and raking leaves for people,” she said.

And in October, she wrote another letter bringing attention to Lynn Bogardus, Delmar’s Miss Fire Prevention who went on to win Miss Delaware, and Lisa and Eva Jackson who won awards in a baton twirling competition.

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Black Russian Pie, Mary Ellen Beachley

It’s interesting to ponder the ways in which different political impulses and movements have had an effect on recipes.

For instance, did the “Women’s Club Movement” and the Progressive Era result in cookbooks that would otherwise have not been produced, and recipes that may not have otherwise been documented? Or would community cookbooks have been an inevitability, produced by churches, causes, and maybe just “because,” whether women wanted to change the world or not?

There is no way to know of course. I only know that there are many cookbooks made by women’s clubs or guilds around the state and that they began with the Progressive era of the 1890s and continued up through at least the 1980s.
“Women’s Club Favorites,” made by the Women’s Club of Hagerstown in 1986 is one of my more recent cookbooks in this vein.

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