Ice Cream, Mrs. Boddy’s / Eloise Hampton Wilson

In 2018 I’m hoping to branch out to some of the interesting archives and historical collections in other parts of the state outside of Baltimore.

The Historical Society of Harford County has Saturday hours once a month so I nervously planned a visit. As a “not a real scholar” I often feel out of place in historical societies – like some kind of intruder – but my experience at HCHS was overwhelmingly positive. The place was bustling with potential volunteers visiting the Open House, plus researchers pulling items for genealogy & school projects. Welcoming staff informed me about their collection of community cookbooks, and one volunteer brought out an over-200-year-old British cookbook to show me. Perhaps the book traveled from England to Harford County with a colonist.

The oldest local historical society in the state, Historical Society of Harford County is in the process of organizing and cataloging their collection of documents, relics, and textiles.

During my time there I got to examine two different books – one commercial cookbook from North Avenue Market (more on that at a later date), and an item from the Eloise H. Wilson collection.

The book is dated to 1810 – probably due to a note written beneath a recipe for Apple Pudding: “Bridgetown March 7th 1810 for Mrs. Fanny Giles.”

Its impossible to truly know the year such a cookbook was started, but it certainly is older than the manuscripts I typically handle. 19 of the books 152 recipes are for puddings – a percentage that would go down over time in American cookbooks as technology and tastes changed. A recipe for a suet pudding known as “The Duke Of Buckingham Pudding” contains rosewater as a flavoring and is boiled in a cloth. Similar recipes appear in cookbooks dating to the 1700s.

Eloise Hampton Wilson Etching, Setting Tomatoes, sturgisantiques.com

The Eloise H. Wilson collection contains everything from 1770s ledgers to Christmas Cards engraved by Wilson. Born in 1906, Eloise Hampton Wilson created engravings primarily depicting workers, many of which were used in magazines such as the New Yorker in the 1930s. She later served on the board of trustees for the  Baltimore Museum of Art.

After doing some research, I believe that the recipe book may have belonged to Wilson’s great-grandmother Ruth Jeffers (maiden name Westcott). Jeffers lived from 1797-1866 in New Jersey. Frances “Fanny” Giles, the daughter of Revolutionary War general James Giles, would have been Ruth Westcott’s sister-in-law, having married Westcott’s half-brother in 1810. Perhaps the Apple Pudding was served at a wedding shower type gathering.

I didn’t make the Apple Pudding, however. I made this lemon-flavored ice cream which is attributed to a “Mrs. Boddy.” Sadly I couldn’t deduce who this person was – possibly a neighbor. It’s kind of a needle in a haystack. 

Daguerreotype courtesy of Stephen Haynes of Minneapolis, Mercy (Harris) (Hampton) Westcott’s 3rd great-grandson

Another possible author candidate for the recipe book is Westcott’s mother Mercy Harris Westcott (1755-1837), whose life spanned opposite ends of New Jersey – born in Bound Brook, she died in Bridgeton.

It was Eloise H. Wilson’s parents, Fanny Hampton Kennard and Robert L Wilson who moved the family to Maryland in the 1930s. Other than that, the family tree has the most roots around the Pittsburgh, PA, and Cumberland County New Jersey areas.

That means that this ice cream never was a Maryland recipe. Well, it is now.

My day at the Historical Society of Harford County was a reminder that fascinating recipe manuscripts and cookbooks may be scattered throughout all corners of the state. There could be one in a library near you… or perhaps in your own home. (If it’s the latter… invite me over!)

Recipe:

“Take 3 qts of new milk, boil it, have ready ten eggs, 2 lbs of white sugar, 4 tablespoonfuls of flour, beat them altogether with grated rind of three lemons, when the milk boils pour it on the ingredients, stir it up, put it on the fire, let it just come to a simmer, set it away to cool, when cold add the juice of the lemons, 1 qt of rich cream, strain through a sieve, then freeze.”

Recipe from “Cookbook 1810,” Eloise H. Wilson Collection, Historical Society of Harford County