Month: January 2024

Lima Bean Dish With Eggs And Cheese, Mildred Stout

“Last summer while most of us had our minds on vacations the Woman’s League of the Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring were deep in the plans for a cookbook,” read an article in the women’s pages of the Washington, DC Evening Star in December, 1953. “In those three months they worked like beavers collecting favorite recipes, planning the art work and getting the first draft ready for the proofreaders. They can now sit back and rest on their laurels… the completed book titled, ‘Cooking Maryland Style’ ($2.50), came off the presses a couple weeks ago.”

The proceeds from the handwritten cookbook went towards building a new meeting hall at the Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring.

I can’t determine when this church on Sligo Avenue was founded. The church is still active today.

Mrs. Mildred Stout contributed several recipes to “Cooking Maryland Style,” including this Lima Bean Dish With Eggs And Cheese. I was drawn to the dish by Stout’s final comment in the instructions: “Good meat substitute.”

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Lord Baltimore Cake, Grace E. J. Hanson

As Lady Baltimore cake ascended in popularity in the late 19th century, it was quickly joined by a lesser-known counterpart.

A 1900 cookbook, “Miss Olive Allen’s tested recipes : 200 selected from many hundreds gathered from all over the world,” touted alongside its Lady Baltimore Cake recipe that the cake is “Delicious! Not expensive when egg yolks are used for Lord Baltimore cake.” Later in the book, the recipe for the latter cake was provided. “Economical. Save egg whites for Lady Baltimore cake.” One cake is “delicious,” the other “economical.” Lord Baltimore never stood a chance.

But wait: Allen’s recipe for Lord Baltimore cake used a filling of raisins, figs, and pecans. Those are Lady Baltimore’s ingredients. The Lady Baltimore Cake, on the other hand, contained maraschino cherries, pecans, and chopped pineapple.

Fannie Farmer corrected this switcheroo and perhaps did the most to popularize Lord Baltimore Cake, which she included in several of her early 1900s cookbooks. In addition to a vanilla-flavored “Ice Cream Frosting” made from egg whites and sugar, Farmer’s cake is filled with excitement: candied cherries, Sherry, pecans, almonds, and crushed dry macaroons. (Farmer may have actually been referring to meringues.)

1953

Between the Ice Cream Frosting and the macaroons, an issue arises: the egg math on Lady & Lord Baltimore just doesn’t add up. If you make both cakes, you’re still going to have some egg yolks to spare. (Lucky you – make this egg pasta!)

This is no big loss since the two cakes don’t form any balance to one-another flavor-wise, either.

One occasionally finds Lord Baltimore on his own in a community cookbook, but such appearances are rare.

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Oysters And Macaroni Au Gratin, Mrs. Robert Valliant

In 1948, three recipes of the wife of one Robert Valliant appeared in the now-legendary community cookbook, one that has seen many reprints over the years: “A Cook’s Tour of the Eastern Shore.” The Valliant family lineage is so enmeshed into Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore that it was hard to determine which Robert Valliant I might be looking into.

Mrs. Valliant’s contributions to the book were for Oyster Bisque, Fried Oysters, and for Oysters and Macaroni Au Gratin.

These choices, along with the timing of the publication of the cookbook, lead me to believe the contributor was Grace Marie Moore Valliant, wife of Robert T. Valliant, who ran the oyster packing company named after his uncle, W.H. Valliant.

The Valliant family was and is involved in many prominent positions spreading out from the Oxford-Bellevue area, from postmaster to chamber of commerce to mayor.

Marie Grace Moore was born in Woodside Delaware in 1915. In 1938, she married Robert T. Valliant, Sr., the son of Jeramiah Valliant, who was involved in farming and who was the “Bro.” of “W.H. Valliant & Bro. Packing Co.”

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