Category: recipes

Kapusta And Kilbash (and Sauerkraut for Thanksgiving)

A different version of this essay appears in Festive Maryland Recipes: Holiday Traditions from the Old Line State.

Sauerkraut came to Baltimore with German (and later, Eastern European) immigrants, but it made the leap to the dinner tables of Baltimore’s other citizens, in particular alongside the Thanksgiving turkey. 

Much has been written about this peculiar phenomenon, with a new flurry of articles and social media posts coming out each year.

In an Instagram post made by the catering company H3irloom Food Group, Chef Tonya Thomas posed proudly with a plate. “Thank you to all of our customers who ordered Chef Tonya’s sauerkraut to add to their holiday spread,” read the caption.

“No matter who you are and what your race, in Baltimore, sauerkraut is on the table at holidays,” Thomas told me. She can trace the sauerkraut tradition in her family back for generations, to well before the 20th century. When Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, Germans were the largest group of immigrants in Baltimore, she noted.

In many places where sauerkraut is eaten, it is stewed with meat cuts or sausages for extra flavor. This was a good fit for Black home cooks’ practice of using every part of an animal, and Tonya’s grandmother cooked hers with pigtails. Tonya eventually began to flavor her own sauerkraut with smoked turkey instead of pork. More recently, she has flavored the sauerkraut with vegetable stock and spices instead of meat, to accommodate H3irloom’s vegan guests. 

Sauerkraut spread in Festive Maryland Recipes

The formula for sauerkraut itself is so simple that only a handful of recipes appear in my Maryland cookbook collection. It’s also long been available for sale in prepared form.

In Elizabeth Ellicott Lea’s 1845 cookbook “Domestic Cookery,” the two recipes for sauerkraut are labeled as “cabbage,” suggesting that sauerkraut may have been the primary use for cabbage in her household.

The earliest Maryland recipe calling the dish by name is in the 1870 “Queen of the Kitchen,” by Mary Lloyd Tyson. Had Tyson wanted to, she could have purchased prepared sauerkraut at William Bodmann’s Pickling House and Vinegar Depot on Howard Street. 

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Ritz Dessert, Maude Schell

New blog posts have been rolling in very slowly since I’ve been busy promoting “Festive Maryland Recipes.” Sometimes I get nervous about letting my research fall by the wayside.

But I’ve been tending to an aspect of Old Line Plate that has become every bit as important to me: connecting with people.

The pandemic made me realize how much this blog experience has changed me as a person. I am, yes, much more cheesy than I used to be, but also less insecure, and less drawn to the negative. My knowledge of how lucky I am to have this has helped me to hold it together when life gets confusing.

What I’d never have guessed is the myriad ways that Old Line Plate has helped me cross paths with kindness. I receive emails from people who find their family recipes on my website. But I’ve also met friendly eBay sellers, librarians, cookbook collectors, generous church groups, and other bloggers and writers.

Having to swallow my shyness and encourage bookstores to carry “Festive Maryland Recipes” was not the easiest thing for me to do. I didn’t know that the process would actually put me in touch with even more nice people.

Some of my favorite stories in “Festive Maryland Recipes” are from Western Maryland. I’ve been eager to spread the word on Frostburg’s Cornish Saffron Bread for years. It so happens that that very town has a long-standing independent bookstore. I reached out to Fred Powell from Main Street Books and he kindly supported us by stocking the book.

image c/o Frederick Powell

Fred established Main Street Books in 1989. He was new to the bookselling business and was simply trying to fill a need in Frostburg. He involved himself heavily in the local community by volunteering, sponsoring sports teams, and connecting with readers who would become his customers.

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Queen of Oude Sauce, Merganthaler Recipe Scrapbook

“At the funeral of the Queen of Oude, a diadem was placed on her brow,” read a story in the Baltimore Daily Exchange in 1858. The short report, filed under “Foreign Miscellany,” focused on jewels, describing “a necklace of lapiz lazuli round her neck, and circlets of amber round her arms and legs. A number of amulets were also attached to the covering in which her body was enveloped.”

Throughout Europe and the United States, newspapers reported on the Paris funeral, which the Fayetteville Semi-Weekly Observer in North Carolina dubbed “a rare spectacle for the pageant-loving population of that great metropolis.”

“The crowd of curious spectators was so great that it was almost impossible for the procession to move along,” the Observer observed. For years afterward, fashion columns reported that ladies in Paris and London emulated the tasseled silk scarves worn by Malika Kishwar, the last Queen of Oude.

The story of how Kishwar ended up dying in Paris, to be buried in the world-famous Père Lachaise cemetery along with Chopin, Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison, is a rather sad footnote in the story of British colonialism in India. Obviously, that history is too involved for my little food blog.

George Duncan Beechey (1798-1852), Portrait of Begum of Oudh, Lucknow, India, circa 1840

Located in the present-day region of Uttar Pradesh, Oude (alternately spelled Oudh, Avadh, or Awadh) was a princely state in India, meaning it wasn’t directly ruled by the British. When enab Aliya Begum aka Malika Kishwar was born in the city of Lucknow, around 1805, the British were in the business of intervening to appoint government officials, and demanding revenue from the kingdom, while also gradually placing regions of the state under more direct rule.

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Crab Meltaways, Juliana “Jukie” Todd

Open just about any Maryland community cookbook from the 1980s, and you’re likely to find a recipe for Crab Meltaways. They’re easy, tasty, and great for company.

Most recipes call for “Kraft Old English Cheese Spread,” a product that, as far as I can tell, debuted in the 1930s. It is likely that the recipe for Crab Meltaways (also known as “Crabbies”) was developed by Kraft in the 1960s, but there are other variations without the product. John Shields included a recipe from Susan Corsaro in his 1992 “Chesapeake Bay Crab Cookbook,” using cheddar cheese, fresh garlic, and parsley.

1932

The ingredients are gently mixed, piled atop split English muffins (often cut into wedges), and frozen. From the frozen state, they broil into a bubbly melted pile of deliciousness.

One of my recipes suggests canned crabmeat because these don’t really necessitate the good stuff.

Jukie Todd from Crisfield didn’t have that concern. A lifetime employee of her family’s MeTompkin Bay Oyster Company, she surely had plenty of crab to work with. Her recipe was included in the Women’s Ministries Faith Fellowship Church’s 1989 cookbook, unfortunately named “Plantation Favorites.” Todd had died in 1986, so the recipe must have been shared by friend or family.

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Spring Salad & Taco Salad, Employees at Fort Detrick

Like most things in Frederick County, Fort Detrick was built on farmland. The military installation started as a small, privately owned airport established in 1929 and later named after World War I squadron flight surgeon Major Frederick L. Detrick. The site was used as an airfield up until the United States entered World War II. In 1943 it was rechristened Camp Detrick and made base of the newly-established U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.

Over the years the site expanded, eventually becoming the largest employer in Frederick County. Along with its expansion grew the rumors and stories, some true and some urban legends.

I grew up in Beltsville, Prince George’s County, near the the US Agricultural Research Center. I know all about how a gated site can serve as the nexus for intriguing lore for children and adults. Whether it was the legendary Goat Man, or the alleged sprawling lush marijuana fields hidden away on the Ag Center campus, the “Beltsville Farms” provided fodder for stories just as it provided salaries for friends’ parents.

My spouse similarly grew up in the shadow of Fort Detrick. He spent his summers in its swimming pool while his parents worked in laboratories. And at school, he heard tales of the menacing “Tower of Doom.”

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