The Bethel Korean Presbyterian Church of Baltimore was founded in June of 1979, with a parish made up of seven families. “Everyone was on the same boat, sometimes literally,” pastor Billy Park told the Sun in 2003. By then, more than 1700 people were attending Sunday services at the church.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed quotas that had been a barrier for many Asian people looking to immigrate into the United States. In the 1970s, Korea was one of the top countries of origin for immigrants into the U.S.
A 1978 article in the Baltimore Sun estimated that the population of Korean immigrants in the city numbered between 7000 and 14,000. Many members of the Korean community had been in the United States for five years or less. The article chronicled some of the issues Korean-Americans were facing: xenophobia and isolation, struggles with starting businesses in a troubled city, and planning educations for their children’s futures. Many of the issues remain the same today for immigrants from all over the world.
Maryland cooking (like that of many places that were/are dining destinations), has two sides to it. Front and center we have the legacy represented by the hotels and caterers – the terrapin, the deviled crab, the fine wines from around the world straight from the Port of Baltimore. On the back end are the legions of home cooks who worked with limited resources but far more flexibility to put white potato pies, stuffed ham, and scrapple on the tables of their family and friends – plus a given assortment of heritagefoods.
The blurred lines and exchanges between the two are too complex to get into, but one thing is certain: we are blessed with pretty good documentation of the recipes and preferences of the home cooks.
Interestingly, it is the historically limited roles of women that we have to thank for this. Since the end of the 19th century, when women wanted to raise money for a cause, the most popular course of action was to produce a community cookbook. As times changed, so did the cookbooks – incorporating more business and design resources, and recipes from all kinds of cooks.
I don’t have a point of comparison, but either way, Marylanders (mostly women) have produced an astounding number of impressivecookbooks. To stand out among them is a bit of a feat.
It may be impossible to know how many lesser-known Maryland cookbooks have been published and lost to time.
I’ve spent many hours obsessively searching the internet, library catalogs, bibliographies, and bookstores for titles to add to my list – especially anything from the 19th century or close to it.
A search of digitized newspapers once turned up the following snippet:
Staunton Spectator, 1902
This began a crazed search to locate a copy of the book. I couldn’t find much and I was disheartened. Months later I had a book pulled at the Maryland Historical Society and as I began to index it, it dawned on me… this was that book I’d read about!
Within its 790 recipes I found some interesting ones. There are three recipes for possum: “Roast Possum,” “Roast Possum (Maryland Style),” and “Roast Possum (Virginia Style).” There’s parsnip wine, “pineappleade,” banana frozen like ice cream, plus Baltimore favorites like sour beef, coddies, and crabcakes.
The book was printed in 1902. The 19th century still loomed large. There are many familiar favorites – forcemeat balls for soup, spinach a la creme, cabbage pudding, deviled crabs, etc.
From what I can tell of the “Maryland Cook Book”s author, Mrs. E. J. Strasburg, her own life changed with the times as well. She was born in 1850 to Conrad H. Kite and Caroline Allenbaugh. According to the 1850 census, the Kites enslaved at least three people. Other Kite extended family members are listed as owning a dozen more slaves. Many more (numbers – no names are given, sadly) are listed under the connected Miller family. The Miller–Kite House in Elkton, VA served as a headquarters for Stonewall Jackson during the Valley Campaign of 1862.
As a bizarre aside, there is a bit of local lore about Emma’s father. He died in 1858 and was buried in a cast-iron casket. In 1882 the family decided to move him to Thornrose Cemetery in Staunton. According to news articles at the time Kite was exhumed, the body had barely decayed in the 24 years it was underground. “The brother of the deceased was startled to see that the face looked just as it did the day the body was buried,” the Staunton Spectator reported. Apparently, a cedar tree had grown around the iron coffin and sealed it nearly air-tight.
David E. Strasburg worked for the Staunton Spectator as a typesetter. During the Civil War, he’d fought for the Confederacy for a few years “in the ranks” and rode out the final years of the war as a founding member of the “Stonewall Brigade Band.” In 1869, 31-year old David E. Strasburg married Emma Kite, who was 19 at the time. The couple and their four children moved to Baltimore around 1883.
David E. Strasburg with the Stonewall Brigade Band
The family began to take in boarders in the early 1890s, placing ads in the Staunton Spectator encouraging Baltimore visitors to stay with the Strasburgs. I don’t know whether this was financial or what. David died in 1895. The 1900 census lists a family of three boarding with Mrs. Strasburg, in addition to her daughter, son-in-law and their child.
And then there is the cookbook. The Woman’s Industrial Exchange was founded in 1880 with the mission of helping women earn money by selling items. On the other hand, a scathing 1898 editorial in the Sun claimed that the Exchange was primarily benefitting the already wealthy.
The reason I am so curious about Mrs. Strasburg’s finances is the context it might provide for her cookbook. Was she intending to emulate wealthy authors like Mrs. B. C. Howard with the prestige of compiling a book? Did she need the money? Did she donate proceeds to a charitable cause?
Alas, we will never know. Emma Strasburg died in May of 1902, just months after the book’s publication. Her name stayed in the papers as her daughter attempted to sue University of Maryland hospital over their negligent treatment of Emma, who’d had her left arm amputated due to cancer in her shoulder. Still under the influence of ether, Mrs. Strasburg was left in the room with a hot water bottle which badly burned her leg, prolonging her recovery. Ultimately, the judge found the University of Maryland not liable.
A lot of Mrs. Strasburg’s recipes tempted me. The sour beef recipe (attributed to her daughter) looks interesting. “Egg Lemonade” is a beverage I’ll have to try. “Siberian Punch” is a weird frozen concoction of whipped cream, meringue, and brandy.
I opted to make a gumbo recipe because okra is so plentiful this time of year. Many people don’t think of okra as a Maryland vegetable but the markets are flooded with it in August and September, and many old cookbooks feature recipes for okra soups and gumbo variants like this one. It may not be recognizable as a Louisiana gumbo, but the name ‘gumbo’ may derive from “ki ngombo,” a Niger–Congo term that many enslaved people would have used to refer to okra.
Strasburg’s recipe infuriatingly instructs the cook to use onion to flavor the frying fat and then to discard it. I disgruntledly removed the onion but I did save it for other use. I substituted rabbit meat for the chicken, making sure to include extra fat to make up for it. I also added a little shrimp powder for additional flavor. Many old Maryland gumbo recipes include crab or oysters.
I ended up with a huge amount of an okay stew. This recipe could be completely satisfying under certain circumstances – use a good chicken, cook over a campfire, and leave in the damn onion (throw in some garlic while you’re at it.)
Sadly, the copy of the “Maryland Cook Book” at the Maryland Historical Society is brittle and crumbling into dust. Miraculously, I eventually purchased a copy of this book for $15. It too is in danger of falling apart, but I donated the book to MDHS in hope that it can be preserved, and eventually, digitized for posterity.
Recipe:
1 onion
1 chicken
flour
1 Quart okra
1 Quart water or stock
cold veal or ham
1 Quart tomatoes, peeled and sliced
salt & pepper
corn
lima beans
green pepper
1 Tb butter
rice
“Fry an onion in lard or some good bacon fat; drain out the fried onion and throw it away. In the fat fry a chicken which has been cut into pieces and well floured. Put the chicken in a soup pot. In this same fat fry 1 quart of sliced okra. Put the okra in the pot with chicken, and cover with 1 quart of hot water, or better still, stock, if you have it on hand. If you have any pieces of cold meat – veal or ham – put them also into the pot, and let all stew slowly. When about half done, add 1 quart of tomatoes (peeled and sliced), salt and pepper to taste; also corn, lima beans, 1 green pepper and a large tablespoonful of butter. Thin, if required, with little hot water. Serve with boiled rice. Gumbo must not be cooked fast; it requires from 4 to 6 hours to cook properly.“
Recipe from “Maryland Cook Book,” by Mrs. E. J. Strasburg
“Boxes of confectionery, cake, etc., sent to students, so far from being the kindness intended, are a positive source of evil. Their contents, eaten, as is generally the case, irregularly and late at night, produce sickness and impair scholarship, perhaps more than any other single cause. Unless parents and friends heed this remark, we shall be obliged to make the reception of such boxes and parcels by the pupils ground for animadversion.” – Connecticut Literary Institution 1870-71 catalog, quoted in “College Girls” by Lynn Peril
After several failed attempts to found a women’s college in Baltimore, the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church finally succeeded in 1885. The main building on St. Paul Street was constructed to harmonize architecturally with the First Church (now Lovely Lane Methodist.)
According to the 1905 book “The College Girl In America And The Institutions Which Make Her What She Is,” the school’s co-founder Dr. John F. Goucher did not hold many other women’s’ colleges in high regard. His philosophy was paraphrased: “The ordinary girls’ college turns out… an occasional scholar, some pedants, many teachers, and a few – a very few – all-around girls… Every effort is made at this college to develop appreciation, ripe culture, and womanliness.”
Nonetheless, sources indicate that life at the “Women’s College of Baltimore City” was not too different than at other women’s colleges. “The History of Goucher College” by Anna Knipp and Thaddeus P. Thomas describes rigorous academics. At 659 pages, Knipp and Thomas’ 1939 history book IS rigorous academics. One aspect that I grasped before dozing off was that the school had a special focus on physical fitness.
Considerations for student health at women’s colleges was not entirely out of the ordinary. Wellesley College founder Henry Durant believed that health was critical to learning, stating that “pies, lies, and doughnuts should never have a place at Wellesley College.”
Out of context, this sounds a like a bizarre fixation, but in fact, snacking and junk food had been the secret scourge of women’s colleges from the beginning. Some schools implemented rules that barred families from sending foods. This only resulted in clandestine dormitory makeshift meals known as “spreads.”
Often made in a chafing dish, with tools on hand (think nail files and powder boxes), the late-night meals became a central part of social life in women’s colleges at the beginning of the 20th century. In a 1906 article in Ladies Home Journal, called “Christmas Pranks of College Girls,” one student reported that “spreads were forbidden and the halls were vigorously patrolled for the suppression of them.”
Fudge is by far the most famous and enduring result of dormitory snacking, and a popular origin story credits the candy to Vassar students.
Fudge was far from the only food served up – it wasn’t even the only candy. In “College Cookery,” a 1912 cookbook printed in Baltimore, there are six recipes for chocolate fudge, as well as recipes for taffy, toasted marshmallows, sandwiches, Welsh Rarebit (a popular chafing dish item), as well as several recipes “brought from Italy by a member of Goucher College.” Of these recipes from Italy, I opted to try the risotto.
“College Cookery” was compiled by Harriet A. Blogg from Norfolk VA. Blogg’s date of birth varies wildly across censuses, but her family moved to Baltimore in the late 1800s. Her father Edward N. S. Blogg was a preacher from Germany and her mother Charlotte Collins Thayer hailed from the large Massachusetts family of Colonel Collins Thayer. The family became prominent in Baltimore. From their home base on 2506 St. Paul Street, the Bloggs engaged and entertained doctors and Peabody Professors, women’s college clubs and charitable organizations. Harriet’s brother Percy T. Blogg was a “sportsman, naturalist, essayist, and poet” according to his 1947 Baltimore Sun obituary. Another brother, Edward R. F. Blogg, was a bookseller whose frequent business travels and illnesses were regularly reported in the Baltimore Sun society pages.
Harriet and her sister Minnie were both librarians. Minnie was one of the first librarians for the Johns Hopkins Hospital Library which became the Welch Medical Library in 1929. She worked with doctors to compile bibliographies for their publications. After she retired in 1935, she volunteered at the Johns Hopkins Nurses Home Library until shortly before her death in 1959.
Miss H.A. Blogg’s second place crab recipe in the Sun, 1911
As for Harriet, she was a librarian for Goucher from 1896-1917, and a correspondent for the Baltimore Sun. She too was involved with medical research work. At Goucher, she founded the Press Club in 1898. According to her 1935 obituary, she was “well known in literary circles.”
As the publication of a cookbook glorifying College Cookery might tip you off, late night dormitory snack-parties eventually became an accepted, even sanctioned, part of college life. As Lynn Peril wrote in “College Girls”: “The 1947 edition of Stephens College’s Within the Ivy student handbook called the spread ‘one of the joys of college life’ proving without a doubt that its authority-flouting nature was deader than a doorknob.”
Needless to say, this coincided with the slow demise of the tradition. Next Friday, when I’m watching all the co-eds at the liquor store conceal their purchases deep inside backpacks, part of me will wish that their rule-flouting could ever be so beneficial to humanity, to popularize something like fudge.
Recipe:
RISOTTO (ITALIAN RICE)
(Brought from Italy by member of Goucher College)
½ cup rice
1 onion
2 tablespoonfuls Grated Cheese (Parmesan)
1 qt. Beef stock—(may be beef extract)
Zaferano, pinch (may be purchased at Itl. shop)*
Chop onion and brown in butter. Add rice dry
(don’t wash it), and cook until brown. Add beef
stock and boil until soft. Add part of cheese and
the powder. Serve with remainder of cheese on
top. This is delicious.
Much of the research for this post came from “College Girls” by Lynn Peril. Peril’s “Mystery Date” zine and her books were some of my favorites in the early 2000s, when I was just dipping my toe into “history” as anything other than classroom drudgery. I really enjoyed revisiting “College Girls.”
“Western High May Become Coeducational Negro School,” the 1954 Baltimore Sun Headline read. Hand-wringing about school desegregation was splashed throughout the pages of the Sun that year. The issue that brought Western High to the front line of the fight was its status as an all-girls school. If the quality of education was unique in white single-sex institutions, then “separate but equal” was subject to question. The NAACP was challenging Baltimore Polytechnic Institute’s unique engineering program on similar grounds.
Enrollment had been dropping at Western, as its surrounding West Baltimore neighborhood became populated with black families whose daughters were barred from the school. Elizabeth T. Meijer of the Baltimore Urban League suggested the obvious solution – integrate the school. She wrote to the Sun that Baltimore was in a position to “not only show the U.S.A. but the whole world… that we not only preach but practice democracy.” Making Western High School an integrated girls’ school was not apparently seriously considered by the school board. There was talk of closing the school altogether.
The Soul Food Cook Book, 1971, Western High School
Ultimately it was decided that the school would relocate to the old City College location at Howard and Centre Streets. Frederick Douglass High School moved into Western’s old location at Gwynns Falls Road.
Thankfully, not everyone was satisfied with this outcome. In June 1953, Eugene D. Byrd wrote a passionate letter to the Sun chastising the school board for hiding behind “ancient views… of persons who cannot understand that God is Love and all mankind is the same in His sight.”
A few years later, a 1956 Sun report declared that the public had accepted the integration of schools, despite a flurry of agitator picketing and student absenteeism in September. By the 1960s, Western High School yearbooks exhibited an integrated student population, united by a common penchant for bouffant hair shellacked meticulously skyward.
Western High School remains a girls’ school to this day; the oldest public all-girls school in the United States (Eastern having gone coed in the early 80s.)
1970 Western High School yearbook, “Westward Ho!”
In 1971, Mrs. Sarah Cooper’s senior English class found out that the teacher was unfamiliar with soul food. The girls began to bring in dishes for Mrs. Cooper to enjoy. Eventually, the students even commandeered the home economics room, inviting the principal and vice principal to dine. “You couldn’t miss what was going on in that room,” said Cooper, “The whole school smelled of soul food.”
With the help of guidance counselor Maisie Rea, the social exchange became a project – the “Soul Food Cookbook.” Rea later explained to Baltimore Sun reporter Jane Howard: “There is no mild tasting soul food. It is more in the way food is seasoned that distinguishes it… we can fix the same dish but mine wouldn’t taste like yours.” Rea’s recipe for kidney stew is included in the book. “People of today rarely have time for the long, slow processes that were responsible for the tasty stews… of earlier days,” she wrote. “Members of my family, however, have held on to some of our traditional recipes.”
The Soul Food Cook Book, 1971, Western High School
The book contains recipes for cracklin’ cornbread, hog maws and chit’lins, black-eyed peas, and coconut pie, along with less famous dishes like peach upside-down cake and “caramel eggnog.”
This potato salad recipe was contributed to the book by Thomasina Falcon. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much about her although I believe she was originally from Anson County North Carolina. She passed away in 1986.
In addition to the recipes, the “Soul Food Cookbook” is peppered with poetry and personal stories about family and food. Mrs. Beulah Taylor wrote that her recipe for cabbage with fatback drippings had been “handed down from generation to generation… as many times as [the] recipe has been handed down, it still tastes good every time.”
Recipe:
12 medium white potatoes, diced
2 diced onions
1.5 stalks diced celery
2 carrots, shredded
6 diced pickles
1.5 Tablespoons mustard
2.5 Teaspoons celery seed
4 Tablespoons mayonnaise
2 Tablespoons salt
1 Teaspoon pepper
2 Teaspoons sugar
1 Teaspoons vinegar
2 Teaspoons pickle juice
1 green pepper
“Bring potatoes to boil about 20 minutes until soft, but not too soft. Place potatoes in drainer and then put in refrigerator, after all the water is drained out. While potatoes are cooking, cut up onions, celery, carrots, pickles, and green pepper. Let potatoes stay in the refrigerator for about 1 hour or until cold. Put onions, celery, pickles, carrots and green pepper in the refrigerator.Take out potatoes, cut them into cubes, and put them in large mixing bowl. Then add your onions, celery, and pickles carrots and green pepper to potatoes and mix lightly. Next add celery seed, sugar, salt, pepper, and pickle juice and mix together. Then add mayonnaise (or Miracle Whip) and mustard and mix and stir together lightly. Add your vinegar a little at a time and mix.After salad is ready, put it back in the refrigerator so that potatoes can absorb seasonings until you are ready to serve. Garnish potato salad with lettuce, tomatoes, and radishes.”
Recipe from The Soul Food Cook Book, 1971, Western High School, found at the Enoch Pratt Free Library
the last of my family pickles made this salad extra special IMHO
Kneeling in the center with the black shirt and white vest is a “T. Falcon,” 1970 Western High yearbook
