A few weeks ago I came across a recipe for something called “Christmas Bell Salad.” The process entailed cooking canned pears in melted cinnamon candy until the pears were red and cinnamon-flavored, and then serving the pears with dyed-green cream-cheese piped at the top to make the pear look like a bell. I don’t usually…
Mrs. Brown, the first-nameless protagonist of playwright Chandos Fulton’s 1873 novelette, responds witheringly to the news that a friend’s daughter has wed a man of modest means. “It was a love-match, I suppose,” her friend Mrs. Campbell told her, and Mrs. Brown “did not deign a reply.” As the plot of Fulton’s novel unfolds, Mrs….
“Next to loving, I suppose that eating is the most fascinating as well as the most deadly form of indoor sport practiced in America, or anywhere. Perhaps I should have placed eating first, for many folks have dyspepsia so badly that they have forgotten how to love and are so disagreeable that no one loves…
With our food culture fixated on ‘chef as singular genius, driver of innovation and change,’ I’ve come to brag about how I prefer to value the contributions of home cooks. I like to tout and uplift cooking born of tradition and love -and yes- sometimes plain old drudgery. I make a show of respecting these…
I first saw this cookbook in the Maryland Room of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Initially, I was distracted by the many ads throughout the book for long-defunct Baltimore businesses. I photographed many of the ads and came home to realize I had not documented the recipes. When I made Hallie A. Shinnamon’s Christmas Cookie…