Santa Ana Wine Chicken, Gray Johnson Poole
Gray Poole got tired of cooking and eating chicken during World War II. “Chicken, chicken, chicken!” she recalled to the Baltimore Sun later, in 1967. “It was always chicken.”
With other meats rationed, Poole found herself getting inventive with chicken. Her husband had been stationed in California and then sent to the Pacific, where he served as a press relations officer. Poole, a writer with a talent for cooking, inventoried her spices and came up with “Santa Ana Wine Chicken.” When her husband Lynn first tried the dish, he declared it the best chicken he’d ever tasted.
Over twenty years later, Gray Poole was sharing her recipe in Helen Henry’s “My Favorite Recipe” column. By then, they’d moved to Baltimore where Lynn hosted a live television program, The Johns Hopkins Science Review.
Lynn Poole’s science program won awards for educational programming. He believed that radio had made a mistake by not featuring educational programming from the its inception. By the time the medium was popularized, “radio was firmly entrenched in patterns which did not include educators,” he lamented. He saw an opportunity for television to not repeat past mistakes.
In addition to his television show, Lynn ran educational programming at the Walters Art Museum. He still found time to work with his wife Gray, co-authoring over 20 books.
Oftentimes, when I research productive couples like Gray and Lynn Poole, I’ll find uneven representation. The “wife assistant.” But the Poole’s partnership in writing nonfiction was put front-and-center in articles about their work, including a 1966 story in the Baltimore Sun about their twenty-fifth book. The Sun described their process, “an efficient system of working, which finds both at typewriters —in separate rooms—from about 8:30 am to 12:30 pm daily.”
The Pooles loved working together. Lynn Poole told the Sun that their only problem was people getting their names wrong. “I keep getting mail addressed to ‘Miss Lynn Poole’ and she gets mail and telephone calls for ‘Mr. Gray Johnson’,” he said, referring to Gray’s maiden name.
She was born Elizabeth Gray Johnson in 1906 in Philadelphia. Her father was born in Missouri, her mother came from New York. Before marrying Lynn in 1941, Gray worked as a journalist and magazine writer. During her time in Baltimore, she wrote for the Baltimore Sun, including a story about a ladies’ race during Preakness in 1949. That story is mainly notable because of the amusing conflict-of-interest: Gray Poole was the public relations secretary for Pimlico.
Most of the Pooles’ books were written as young adult books. I am almost certain that I read 1961’s “Weird and Wonderful Ants” as a child in the 1990s. I read every single book about ants in the Beltsville library. At 118 pages, “Weird and Wonderful Ants” was probably one of the most thorough. (I would have loved Wikipedia.)
Even though they were aimed at young adults, the Pooles’ books were plenty impactful – so much so that at least one of them spread misinformation. After observing an old movie prop featuring the Olympic rings, the Pooles surmised that the symbol dated to ancient Greece. In actuality, the item had been used by Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl for her 1938 documentary Olympia. The Pooles’ error made it into other books and germinated a myth that the Olympic rings, actually designed in 1913, dated to ancient times.
Lynn Poole died in 1969 at age 58. His obituary referred to his science television show as “a landmark in educational television.”
Gray Johnson Poole wrote several more books, including an entire book about Mistletoe, “Mistletoe: Fact & Folklore.” She described how, during her childhood on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, hunters shot mistletoe down from trees, for farmers to sell to florists.
Horticulturist Dr. Francis Gouin categorizes Poole’s childhood memory as “folklore.” “Most of the commercial crop comes from Oklahoma,” he told the Wilmington Delaware Morning News paper in 1977. “It gets too cold here.”
Poole died in 2005 in California. Her family asked that contributions in her memory be made to the Lynn and Gray Poole Humanities Scholarship to Johns Hopkins University’s Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences. The Pooles’ books surely still hold plenty of shelf space in public libraries, waiting for curious children who want to read about volcanoes or icebergs or ants. As of this writing, Gray Poole appears to have written the only non-fiction mass-market book dedicated entirely to mistletoe.
Recipe:
- 1 chicken about 3 1/2 pounds, cut-up
- .25 Cup flour
- .5 Teaspoon mustard powder
- .5 Teaspoon paprika
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- 2.5 Cup hot chicken broth
- 1 Cup dry white wine
- .5 Cup cream sherry (to be added during last 5 minutes of baking)
- .25 Teaspoona dry terragon
- salt
- black pepper
- butter or vegetable shortening
Toss chicken pieces in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Brown chicken in butter or vegetable shortening in heavy iron skillet. Remove pieces to casserole which has been rubbed with cut side of half a lemon. After removing pieces to casserole, reduce heat under skillet and add 1/4 cup flour, mustard and paprika. Smooth to paste with juice in the pan and slowly add hot chicken broth, stirring constantly to prevent lumps. When thin sauce is bubbling add white wine and lemon juice and pour liquid over chicken in casserole. Cover and bake in 350-degree oven for three quarters of an hour. Then uncover and bake fifteen minutes longer. Five minutes before serving add the cream sherry. Do not stir. Serve 4.
Recipe adapted from My Favorite Recipe. Helen Henry. 1968.
