Broiled Chicken Deluxe, Edna Karlik
Mrs. Ronie Venables made honorable-mention in the first annual “National Chicken Cooking Contest” at the Delmarva Chicken Festival in 1949. Were she able to prepare her fried chicken on a wood-burning stove, she told a Universal Press reporter, she could have beaten out Mrs. A.L. Karlik for first place. The Press reporter contrasted the two contestants by describing Karlik as “pretty [and] young,” and referring to Venables as a “70-year old farm woman.”
In that article, Venables shared her prize-winning recipe in vague terms:
“A chicken, salt, pepper, egg, milk, flour and shortening. She stews the chicken, seasons it, dips it in a mixture of egg, milk and flour then fries it.”
She declared that “the secret… is in putting the water in which the chicken is stewed on the chicken after it is fried.”
For her part, Mrs. Karlik told the Wilmington, Delaware News-Journal that she was “flabbergasted” to have beat out the other 140 contestants. Family and friends had persuaded Karlik to enter the competition. She triumphed with “Broiled Chicken Deluxe,” a recipe that she frequently made for her husband and 10-year old son.
You might think that Karlik and Venables would walk off into the sunset, Karlik with her prize-money and deep-freezer, and Venables with a fun memory, but that isn’t exactly what happened. Cooking contests may seem blasé today, but the Delmarva Chicken Festival and the accompanying cooking contest were a big deal.
For Edna Karlik, the memory of her victory would resurface again and again.
Newspapers all over the country covered the 1949 contest. The Tampa, Florida Times reported that Mrs. Karlik “couldn’t cook a lick when she married 14 years ago,” and that she’d learned the recipe from an insurance agent. The Suburban List of Essex Junction, Vermont categorically declared “the best way to cook a chicken was determined in the first national cooking contest,” and shared the “Broiled Chicken Deluxe” recipe with readers.
At the 1950 Delmarva Chicken Festival, Karlik presented the first prize to her successor Mrs. Talcie Howell. In 1954, Karlik was voted the head of the Wicomico County Council of Homemakers, and her recipe was in the Salisbury news once again. In 1959, the “National Father’s Day Committee” declared Broiled Chicken Deluxe to be “the official recipe of Father’s Day.” Governor J. Millard Tawes presented Karlik with a citation and a plaque. In 1963, she attended the Chicken Festival in an official capacity, giving tips to that years’ contestants.
Eventually, the National Chicken Cooking Contest was held outside of the Delmarva peninsula. It was “national,” after all. The Wilmington Delaware Morning News covered the event in 1973. Karlik’s win was again mentioned, along with the fact that although the event was held in Birmingham, Alabama, the winner had been a woman from Delaware. Chicken remained the pride of Delmarva.
As the years went on, the winning recipes changed with the times, incorporating a broader range of flavors, preparations and presentations. Many winners came and went, but Mrs. A.L. Karlik always reigned as the first.
She was born Edna May Hilfrank in Castleton-on-Hudson, New York in 1903. She married Albert Karlik in 1935. Before winning the National Chicken Cooking Contest, Edna’s name appeared in the Salisbury Daily Times in 1946 because she found a dead body. Mrs. Karlik lived in Salisbury for most of her married life, and died in 1987. Posthumously, her name remained associated with the festival when the Salisbury Daily Times covered it’s 50th anniversary in 1999, and in 2008 when the festival returned to Salisbury.
For Mrs. Karlik, the contest was her ‘big break,’ but Mrs. Venables still got her moments in the spotlight. The day after the Chicken Cooking Contest, she was interviewed about her competition experience and her life. She expressed her dislike of electric stoves, confessing to owning one that she never used. That article was syndicated and ran in papers like the Daily News in Dayton Ohio.
In 1961 Venables posed for the Salisbury Daily Times with her grandchildren and her Thanksgiving turkey. The caption declared that, as one of the original Chicken Contest winners, she had “a claim to fame in poultry roasting circles.”
In 1969, at age 91, she was interviewed by the Times again. She had stayed up until 1 a.m. to watch the Moon landing. “It’s God’s plan to bring the world closer to God,” she said, and expressed certainty that astronauts would one day visit Mars.
The final Delmarva Poultry Festival was held in 2014, years after many of the original cooking contestants had passed away. The Delmarva Poultry Industry recorded many of the recipes in several souvenir cookbooks. The recipes demonstrate the creativity and determination of several generations of home cooks, from a time when a chicken recipe could change a life.
Recipe:
- 2 to 2.5 broiler-fryer, split
- 1 halved lemon
- 2 Teaspoons salt
- .25 Teaspoon black pepper
- .5 Teaspoons paprika
- .5 Cup melted butter
- 2 Teaspoons sugar
Wipe chicken as dry as possible. Rub entire surface of chicken with cut lemon, squeezing out some juice. Sprinkle with mixture of salt, pepper, and paprika. Coat with melted butter, then sprinkle with sugar.
Place chicken in broiler pan and flatten pieces out. Place in broiler as far away from heat as possible, and cook 35 to 40 minutes. Baste occasionally with butter.
Recipe from “Prize Winning Del-Mar-Va-Lous Chicken Recipes 1949 & 1950, Delmarva Poultry Industry, 1950”
For other Delmarva Chicken Contest recipes see:
