My plan to roll out high-quality content in 2020 got off to an inauspicious start when I decided to make “Barbecued Hot Dogs.” It’s not that the dish wasn’t great- it is hot dogs after all – but January isn’t exactly a time when people have frankfurters on the mind, nor is there much of a sheen of “Marylandness” to hot dogs. Nevertheless, I had the main ingredient in the freezer, nearing the end of its useful life.
At any rate, the source cookbook, “Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen,” is itself a Maryland classic. Both the 1962 original and the 1993 update are chock full of recipes from Centreville-area cooks whose Eastern Shore roots run deep.
Baltimore Sun, 1925
Henrietta Holton Dallam contributed this recipe to the original. She was born in 1925 in Centreville to William Layton & Grace Burrus Holton. In 1946, Henrietta married Clayton Cann Carter, who went on to become a well-known local judge. The couple had two daughters and divorced sometime before 1967. Henrietta went on to marry John W. Dallam in 1972. I can’t find much else about Mrs. Dallam other than that she attended Virginia Intermont and Mary Washington Colleges, worked as a salesperson in Easton, and was in the choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal, the church that produced the “Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen” cookbooks. She died in 1998.
Henrietta’s family on the “Layton” side traces their presence on the Delmarva peninsula to the mid 1600s. Her Great Grandmother was named Eleanor Ridgely Goldsborough, which lends even more Maryland credentials to this hot dog dinner.
Henrietta Holton in the Mary Washington College Yearbook, 1945
Although websites like history.com credit Nathan Handwerker’s Coney Island hot dog stand with popularizing hot dogs around 1915, they were already big news before Nathan’s even opened. A 1913 article in The Atlanta Constitution asks in headline type: “HAVE YOU GOT THE ‘HOT DOG HABIT?’ NO? THEN HURRY FOR EVERYBODY THAT’S ANYBODY IS DOING IT NOW.”
A 1909 news article in the Lincoln Star Journal in Nebraska announced that hot dogs’ popularity was waning on Coney Island, with Hamburgers taking over. In May 1912, an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle bemoaned the lack of availability of hot dogs in May.
A 1904 obituary for Ignatx Frischmann of Brooklyn credited him with pioneering the hot dog bun – an invention which surely propelled the convenience and popularity of hot dogs. The invention made the Austrian-born baker very wealthy, and became “the only means by which the frankfurter could be sold.”
Atlanta Constitution, 1913
All of these stories are in dispute, and contradictory tales of the origins and propagation of hot dogs and hot dog buns abound.
The year Henrietta Holton was born (1925), the Baltimore Sun was singing the praises of hot dogs here in Maryland. An article by May Irene Copinger, “Acclaiming The Hot Dog,” was accompanied by an illustration of a jar of mustard and a fashionable woman enjoying a hot dog in the bathtub.
“In its devotion to the hot dog, Baltimore yields to no community,” Copinger wrote. The author declared hot dogs to be a “symbol of democracy” to rival the bald eagle. The “masses and classes” freely mingled in line for this “epicurean delight.”
Pittsburgh Press, 1936
As for the barbecue sauce element, it seems to have come into vogue in the 1930’s. One article in the Hennessey Clipper in Oklahoma recommended that housewives serve frankfurters with bacon and a sauce not unlike the one in Mrs. Dallam’s recipe. Marie Gifford, the “Armour Food Economist,” assured readers that hot dogs were not only economical but “All American,” and that a German citizen wouldn’t even recognize them as a familiar sausage.
That recipe was published in May of 1935, but continued to be reprinted into the fall and winter and on to next year. The dish was fit for “hot or cold weather,” the Pittsburgh Press declared. So my January hot dog post isn’t too out of place. The Baltimore Sun put it best in 1925:
“According to one of Baltimore’s hot dog authorities, there is no closed season for this delicacy, as there is, for instance, for ducks and terrapins, and other kindred delicacies. You may have a hot dog whenever you desire.”
Recipe:
- 8 hot dogs
- .25 Cup chopped onion
- 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 Teaspoon sugar
- .75 Teaspoon mustard powder
- .25 Teaspoon salt
- .125 Teaspoon pepper
- .75 Teaspoon paprika
- 6 Tablespoons tomato catsup
- 3 Tablespoon vinegar
- 6 Tablespoon water
- 2 Teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 2 drops Tabasco sauce
Sauté the chopped onion in the salad oil. Add remaining ingredients except hot dogs and simmer for 15 minutes. Split hot dogs and place in a baking dish. Pour the sauce over them. Bake at 375 degrees or 1/2 hour. Baste several times while cooking. Serves 8.
Recipe from “Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen,” The Episcopal Church Women of St. Paul’s Parish, 1962 & 1993
