“Probably in no other State in the Union is the peach more perfectly at home than in Maryland, it having held undisputed supremacy among fruits in that State for over a Century and a half.” – The Peaches of New York, by U.P. Hedrick 1917 Maryland had at least 29 distinct peach cultivars in 1917….
Mildred Fisher of Plainfield, Indiana visited her daughter in New Jersey in the summer of 1966. One day she decided to do some summer canning and she went to a local produce market. She saw a pile of beautiful ripe mangoes. “I’d like a half-dozen mangoes,” she told the clerk. He looked at her blankly…
“We are the cheapest book house in the United States,” declared an 1896 ad for the firm of I. & M. Ottenheimer. “You don’t need a stepladder to reach our prices.” The newsletter was “The Bookseller and Newsman,” a trade journal of publishers and bookstores. News of the publishing firm appeared throughout, from a front…
Marietta Gibson dedicated an entire section to “Ices” in her irritatingly repetitive 1894 cookbook, “Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s Maryland And Virginia Cookbook.” In it, you will find recipes for grape sherbet; coffee ice cream; a ‘bisque’ ice cream filled with crushed meringues; several recipes for chocolate ice cream; a frozen punch spiked with champagne, rum,…
A few years ago I had the privilege of doing an event with Chefs John Shields and Gwyn Novak at Gwyn’s unique space on Solomon’s Island, No Thyme to Cook. It was basically a cooking demonstration and we created Broiled Chicken Deluxe, Deviled Crab, Mrs. Tawes Seven-Layer Cake, and some other seasonally-inspired choices. I talked…