Unlike other charity cookbooks, this one doesn’t even name any of the women who might be involved in compiling it. The book doesn’t say what cause the book is benefitting, only that the money “is to be used for a benevolent purpose.” The introduction also gives a blanket endorsement to every single advertiser within the book, promising that they all sell “the best articles and at the most satisfactory prices,” and that “We” (presumably meaning members of the society), “have tested many of them ourselves and know whereof we speak.”
The first part of the book contains a lot of bossy advice about social graces and housekeeping. It turns out that that section has been lifted verbatim from the 1877 “Home Cook Book” by the Ladies of Toronto.
The Church of the Holy Comforter was established at Pratt & Chester Streets in 1876. (For a few years before that, the congregation had been meeting in another church.)
The Ladies Aid Society of the Church of the Holy Comforter appears to have been very on trend. In 1879 they held a Strawberry Festival – very popular for the time. Then, of course, there was this cookbook. In 1886 they started a Temperance Society. Maybe that’s what the book was raising money for and why they were so cryptic about it.
By far the most interesting thing about this book, however, is all of those advertisements. They give a great sense of the many types of specialized retail all over Baltimore at the turn of the century. Ice sales was a big one, which makes sense. There’s also multiple advertisements for places selling mattresses stuffed with husk and hair. Fire insurance is well represented. 10 years after the publication of this book, many customers doubtless cashed in.
Baltimore citizens had to go to a specialty store to buy an umbrella, lace, or “a gentleman’s two button walking glove.” Yet a store selling jewelry also sells trunks and cutlery. An advertisement for Stieff pianos is one of the most elaborately rendered. An ad for “Hutzler Bbothers One Price House” on Howard Street is simple text. The typo is real.
I made a rice pudding recipe from this book. Unlike many of the other recipes, it does not appear to be copied from the Canadian cookbook, but then again this is barely a recipe.
For what it’s worth, the famous fudge recipe is also original, or at least copied from somewhere less obvious. If you think about it one way, you could blame prohibition on fudge. That makes it seem a little less sweet now doesn’t it?
Recipe:
1 Cup rice
2 Quart milk
8 Tablespoon sugar
a little salt
One cup of rice, two quarts of milk, eight tablespoonfuls of sugar, a little salt. Soak the rice in a pint of the milk two hours, add the other ingredients, and bake two hours slowly.
Warning: This is a pretty macabre story to go with a candy recipe post. It’s October, so if you want you could come up with some intrigue about ghosts in Greenmount Cemetery. If you are more the spiritual type you can think of the connections between food and communion with the dead.
A recent run-in with a bad head-cold scared me back into eating massive quantities of citrus fruit. After carefully removing the flesh and juice from a half-dozen grapefruits I figured I would finally try a common old recipe: candied citrus peel. Lemon and orange had been popular options in all of my oldest cookbooks but in the early 20th-century grapefruit really began to catch on.
Baltimore at that time had more diverse produce options than you would expect. While citrus fruit from Florida was a huge industry, the ports at the Inner Harbor were just as likely to receive shipments from Jamaica along with other items like coconuts and bananas. Occasionally fruit was even smuggled in. Many failed fruit smuggling efforts were reported in the pages of the Baltimore Sun from the late 1800s through 1910s.
In September of 1909 the Baltimore Sun reported that “Grape fruit is more popular each season, and is no longer considered a luxury, as formerly.”
For the most part, as you would expect, grapefruit was eaten for breakfast, juiced, or served more pretentiously scooped out and combined with other fruits back in their halved rind. If using both the fruit and the peel was not sufficient, the women’s page of the Sun had the following DIY hint in 1913: “the seeds of grapefruit have an æsthetic use which the lowly apple core has not, for if planted they will grow into a beautiful green vine.”
By 1931 the local grocery store Hopper & McGaw listed grapefruit as a “Thanksgiving specialty,” along with raisins, mince meat, figs and nuts.
“The Tried and True Recipe Book” at the Enoch Pratt Free Library
The cookbook I got my candied peel recipe from is not dated, but the call number at the Pratt Library implies it is from 1920. Entitled “The Tried and True Recipe Book,” it was compiled by the Woman’s Guild of the Church of St. Michael and All Angels in Baltimore. Lots of the surnames ring familiar to me from street names, Maryland families, and other recipes in my collection: Mosher, Sothoron, Diffenderffer, etc.
This recipe (as well as many others in the book ranging from soups to sweets) was contributed by Mrs. J. J. Forbes Shaw, the wife of a Baltimore banker and tobacco merchant. Born Harriet Alexander Hereford in Union WV in 1874, she hailed from well-known families. Her father, Frank Hereford was a senator and congressman. Her grandfather on her mother’s side, Hugh Elmwood Caperton, was also a congressman. The maternal side of her family are ancestors of William Gaston Caperton III, the governor of West Virginia from 1989-1997.
Harriet married James John Forbes Shaw in 1907, and the family lived at 1809 N. Calvert Street. They were fairly prominent, turning up in society columns in the Sun. In 1921, however, their mentions took a turn for the tragic.
Rev. Wyatt Brown, D. D., “The Tried and True Recipe Book”
Their 12-year old daughter Alice Caperton Shaw drowned when a rowboat containing the girl, her two sisters and three other children capsized on the Servern River. Reverend Wyatt Brown, whose photo appears in the front of “The Tried and True Recipe Book,” rescued the other five children. The many newspapers that covered the incident reported that he was a nervous wreck after the incident, covered in scratches from the children’s grasps.
Twelve years after the harrowing incident, in April 1933, Harriet Shaw died at age 59. Mr. Shaw did not recover from the pain of these deaths. On September 20th, 1937, he visited the graves of his wife and daughter at Greenmount Cemetery. Eventually, he kneeled on the ground, pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the head. The cemetery superintendent who had been watching Shaw pace in the cemetery cried out, but it was too late. Shaw left a note pinned to his clothing, stating simply “The act is my own.”
The Shaw home on 1809 N. Calvert Street is no longer standing, but nearby, The Church of St. Michael & All Angels is still there at 2013 St. Paul. The reverend who saved the surviving daughters from the 1921 boat accident is most likely Hunter Wyatt-Brown. He was known for weaving the “Lost Cause” ideology into his sermons, and Mrs. Shaw had been a member of Daughters of the Confederacy. Today, The Church of St. Michael & All Angels serves a multicultural congregation.
Although Wyatt-Brown left Maryland to become a bishop in Harrisburg Pennsylvania, his son Bertram Wyatt-Brown returned to Baltimore to study history at Johns Hopkins. In “The Society for U.S. Intellectual History” in 2015, Andrew Hartman wrote of Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s work: “Bert… zeroed in on the tragic and gothic South, as well as a host of men and women, gnarled by death, humiliation, loss, and anxieties. His books are populated by the chronically depressed, and by tortured writers on the brink of suicide, or novelists who were as much at war with the self as the region they called home.”
Recipe:
Grapefruit peel, cut into thin slices
salt
water
sugar
“After taking out the meat of the grape fruit cut rind in long pieces. Cover it with a strong salt water and let it soak 12 hours. Change water every 12 hours until rinds have soaked in strong brine 48 hours. Take rinds out of salt water and cover with fresh cold water and let it boil 10 minutes. Change water and let it boil another 10 minutes. Do this 6 times. Then take it out and weigh rinds and put a pound of sugar to every pound of fruit. Let cook slowly until the syrup, formed by putting sugar on rinds, has boiled away. Then take out piece by piece of grape fruit and roll in granulated sugar.“
Recipe from “The Tried and True Recipe Book,” Woman’s Guild, Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Baltimore
candied citrus peel chopped as a jelly roll cake filling
“Because fall and winter diets are often deficient in vitamins, A, B, and C, and important minerals, kale should be served at least two or three times a week.” – 8/7/1953 Hagerstown Morning Herald
I recently acquired this little community cookbook, “Kitchen Kapers,” put out by Bethel 31 of The International Order of Jobs Daughters in 1952. I had a hard time finding any history specific to this Masonic organization chapter, which is located in Westminster. The basic gist of their mission as stated on their website is that they teach “leadership, charity, and character building.”
The recipe’s contributor, Virgina Stoner, appears to have been about 31 when the book came out in 1952. Her family owned a Westminster home that had been surveyed by the Maryland Historical Trust for some unique architectural features. It was noted in their report that the home had been in the family since it was built in 1890.
There are a few things that I found interesting about this cookbook. The first is the 1950’s graphics which actually look so much like kitschy clip-art that I originally assumed the book was much newer. This style is so ubiquitous now that it is hard to imagine it in its contemporary context.
The same community cookbook – title, artwork and all – appears to have been used all over the country with recipes from different organizations. It has little corny comics throughout the book – an interesting inclusion for a book design that is basically a template.
As for the recipe itself, I find its open-endedness to be a little surprising. You can either use milk or just use the pot liquor to make the sauce for the kale. Those are two very different options. I suspect the latter option may be a holdover from WWII-era thriftiness.
Cumberland News, June 14th, 1943
I opted for the milk because, as a 1959 headline declared in the Salisbury Daily Press: “Kale Tastes Good in Cream Sauce.”
Creamed kale recipes appear to have been pretty popular during that decade, although recipes for a similar dish appeared in the 1930s under the moniker “panned kale [or spinach].” In the 19th century, it’s predecessor was known as “spinach a la creme.”
Despite its current undeserved punch-line status, kale has been in the U.S. since European colonization. The word probably comes from the same root as colewort, which is now basically known as collards.
In the 1890s, the Baltimore Sun occasionally reported on the thousands of barrels of kale that were shipped north from Norfolk. It was fairly popular in markets as well as gardens.
Hagerstown Morning Herald, June 26, 1950
It was in the 1930s that the health benefits of kale really started to get attention. The Afro-American published a recipe for panned kale in 1930 under the headline “Pure Food Builds Health.” Articles in women’s columns continually provided recipes and boasted of kale’s nutritional value thereafter.
I was surprised to learn that kale was even eaten raw in salads historically. I am partial to raw kale salads myself, but somehow I bought into the hype and just assumed that raw kale was some modern-health-food era reverse-innovation.
Never-mind the fact that many of the nutrients in kale may not even be bioavailable when kale is consumed raw. In fact, the vitamins are probably all in that pot liquor that I set aside to replace with milk. Ah, well.
Recipe:
1.5 Lb kale
water
salt
2 Lb onions
.25 Cup shortening
3 Tablespoon flour
1.5 Cup milk
salt
pepper, black
“Wash well 1 ½ lbs kale
Cook in boiling salted water – enough to come half-way up around kale – until tender, about 15 minutes.
Peel 2lbs (about 12) small white onions
Cook in boiling salted water until tender, about 15 minutes. Drain and save liquid from both cake and onions.
Combine vegetables.
Make a sauce of
¼ c. shortening
3 tbsp flour
1 ½ c. milk (or use vegetable liquid)
Salt and pepper
Pour over kale and onions.
Serves 6.”
Recipe from “Kitchen Kapers,” Bethel 31 Of The International Order Of Jobs Daughters” Westminster, MD
Home Economics as a professional pursuit codified “women’s work” and amended school curricula, but it also opened doors for women professionally.
The name Virginia Roeder may ring a bell to longtime Baltimore recipe collectors. For 23 years she wrote for the “women’s pages” of the Baltimore Evening Sun, offering guidance on cooking and housekeeping. She penned three columns weekly, totaling around 3500 over the course of her career. The most enduring legacy of these columns is the “Fun with Food” and “Fun with Sea Food” cookbooks still serving many Baltimore kitchens today.
Richard Q. Yardley illustration, “Fun With Sea Food”,1960
In 1953, the Sun profiled Roeder, who was then hosting a Television show called “Nancy Troy’s Food Show.” (I am not sure why she assumed the “role” of Nancy Troy on the show.) The Sun reported that Roeder’s days began at 5:30 a.m., preparing breakfast for her husband and three children before heading to work at the William S. Baer School where she taught home economics to disabled children. After a day’s work she prepared dinner for her family and then “[sat] down with her husband to bring his company’s books up to date” for his wholesale distribution business.
In 1961 the Sun ran a highly illustrated tour of the Roeder’s home on Meadowwood Road, asking “how does an advisor to housewives manage her own home?” They described the decor in the “immaculate” home, complete with pool table, children’s playroom, “roomy pink kitchen,” and a corner desk in the master bedroom where Roeder typed her columns on Saturdays.
Basically, Roeder was Baltimore’s own Martha Stewart. (Roeder served on the board of a bank – she did not get involved in any insider trading, however.)
Born Virginia Voigt in Oklahoma, Roeder followed in her mother’s footsteps to pursue a career in education, earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Science and Arts at Oklahoma (formerly Oklahoma College for Women). She soon ended up in Baltimore, where she made her mark on the school system, the food culture, and even in banking.
She’s been inducted to the Oklahoma College for Women hall of fame, where a biography of her achievements declares itself to be “simply a list of firsts.” In addition to earning a master’s and a doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins, Virginia Roeder became the “first female Deputy Superintendent Baltimore City Public Schools,” “first woman president Maryland Association of Secondary School Principals,” and “first woman board of directors Carrolton Bank.”
After retiring from education she continued to be a successful businesswoman in real estate and travel agencies.
Even while working towards all of these goals, Roeder maintained the refined image of an ideal mid-century “housewife.”
I got my copies of “Fun with Sea Food” from the Book Thing. The photo at the front shows a smiling Virginia Roeder. The author’s biography lists one accomplishment after another before declaring “Mrs. Roeder does all the cooking for her family.”
Two recipes for crab cakes are included, one of which has been marked “excellent” by my book’s previous owner. Other sections besides “The Delightful Crab” are adorably titled: “The Fascinating Fish,” “The Sophisticated Scallop,” “The Admirable Oyster.”
The recipe for Clam Fritters asks below the title, “Haven’t you ever made them?” I hadn’t so I took Virginia Roeder up on her challenge.
Recipe:
.5 Pint clams, minced
.75 Cups flour
.5 Tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon crab seasoning (adapted – Roeder used nutmeg and salt._
1 beaten egg
.5 Cups milk
2 Teaspoons grated onion
.5 Tablespoons melted butter
oil for frying
Sift dry ingredients together. Combine egg, milk, onion, butter and clams. Add to dry ingredients and stir until smooth. Drop batter by teaspoonfuls into hot oil, 350 degrees, and fry until golden brown on each side.
Recipe adapted from “Fun With Sea Food,” Virginia Roeder
I thought we’d take things back into the 20th century this week.
Among the “treasures” acquired in 1960 by the Maryland Department of the Enoch Pratt Free Library (”Maryland Room Acquires ‘Treasures’”, Baltimore Sun, November 1960) is a copy of a cookbook put out in 1948 by the Maryland Home Economics Association. Much like the “Secrets of Southern Maryland Cooking” book, it is written in many different hands with varying degrees of legibility.
Entitled “Maryland Cooking,” the book manages to pack 310 recipes. Three are for beaten biscuits, one is for crab cakes. “Stuffed Country Ham” is there too. The book is also notable in that it draws from regions of Maryland where less community or historic cookbooks had been produced. One recipe for “Cornish Saffron Bread,” is prefaced with the description that it was introduced to Frostburg by settlers from Cornwall in the mid 19th century. Ethel Grove from Washington County appropriately contributed a recipe for “Maple Bavarian Cream.” Each of Maryland’s counties had a committee gathering recipes for the book.
The cover illustration was done by Richard Q. Yardley, an editorial illustrator for the Sun, whose illustrations also adorn the Sun’s “Fun with Food” and “Fun with Sea Food” books from the 1960s.
The purpose of “Maryland Cooking” was to gain funds towards a Washington, DC Headquarters for the American Home Economics Association, and hopefully to provide scholarships to help “finance the education of girls who want to become home economists.”
After cooking schools had codified the domestic arts into a sort of ‘science for women,’ this type of education became offered to a younger audience through private schools or as part of public high school education. Newspaper articles marveled, sometimes condescendingly, at this new branch of education. In May 1913, a Sun reporter visited the cooking classes, which were taught at Western High School in Baltimore, and observed 120 pupils, “Baltimore’s fairest,” studying “ways to capture the heart of the male of the species.” The reporter declared that even a “hardened misogynist” would be charmed by the epicurean meals prepared by the students.
A follow up story in June remarked on the “awful fuss they make over a panful of pie.”
Home Economics at Iowa State College, 1942, Jack Delano, loc.gov
The housekeeping department, the June article continued, was conducted by Miss Helen Palen(1883-????), the “presiding genius” of a “dainty little flat” used to teach cleaning methods and laundry, although Palen noted that she did not expect the girls to have to do their own laundry.
Palen was still teaching housekeeping at the school in 1919, when the Sun reported on how the school was training girls “for future usefulness.”
Palen’s commitment to home economics education ran deep, and she appears in Johns Hopkins circulars as attending courses for teachers throughout the late 1910s. She served as the president of the Maryland Home Economics Association from 1918-1920.
That was nearly 30 years before the publication of “Maryland Cooking,” but it is her recipe for Beet Relish that I turned to to preserve my spring beets and cabbage.
Similar recipes appear in newspapers at the turn of the 20th century, but the European origins couldn’t be much more obvious. The beets (and in this case, a healthy amount of sugar…) sweeten up the horseradish and the cabbage mellows the whole thing out. The most similar condiment I could find online is called “tsvikly” in the Ukraine.
I naively thought that my backyard horseradish would be sufficient at first. When I dug it up and found it puny and pitiful, I had to go to a few stores to find horseradish that was unadulterated with oils or other additives. I ultimately found it in the seafood section.
I had forgotten the joy of a nice oniony roast beef sandwich with horseradish and greens. The relish also made a nice cheddar grilled cheese.
