Chicken Shortcake Eileen, Mrs. Lillian Weisberg

The National Chicken Cooking Contest may have been “National,” but the celebrated ingredient at its center was “Delmarva Chicken,” and the press on the peninsula didn’t forget it. As usual, the Salisbury Maryland Daily Times reported heavily on the contest in 1957.

Entrants came from 12 states to compete in the crown jewel event at the Delmarva Chicken Festival, which was held in Laurel Delaware that year. Mrs. Howard W. Sands of Tunkhannock Pennsylvania was declared the one to watch, having won the Pennsylvania Poultry Cooking Championship the year prior. Another contestant, Harold Weisberg, was “not only a chicken-cooking expert” but also the husband of a previous first-prize winner. And another contestant had her own connection to the contest: her name. Eileen Young had lent hers to Mrs. Weisberg’s “Chicken Shortcake Eileen,” a recipe that won first prize in 1956.

Some newspapers reported that Young had helped develop the recipe that bore her name. A story in the Wilmington Delaware morning news stated that Young planned to enter the 1956 contest herself but had other obligations. One thing that the papers didn’t report was how Eileen felt about missing her chance to win, or whether the namedrop was sufficient consolation. She was relegated to a footnote, while Mrs. Lillian Weisberg got the glory, her full name and recipe reprinted in newspapers around the country.

Weisberg certainly knew her way around chicken. She spent most of her life near the Gambrills/Hyattstown area, where she was born in 1913 to Charles and Lillian Stone. Young Lillian met Harold Weisberg while both were working for the Senate in Washington DC, and they married in 1942. They moved back to Hyattstown to operate a specialty poultry farm, which they called “Coq d’Or.”

After her contest win, the Wilmington Delaware Morning News referred to Lillian as a “house-wife-office worker.” The paper described Lillian’s 30-mile commute to DC where she worked as a bookkeeper. It also revealed more about her cooking prowess beyond poultry. “Mrs. Weisberg is well known for her cooking skill in Maryland and the District of Columbia. It is not confined to cooking chickens. She also makes up batches of exotic jellies, using Puerto Rican and other foreign fruits not readily secured on the market.”

The penchant for exotic ingredients and the rare specialty poultry that the Weisbergs raised at “Coq d’Or,” make the couple sound like gourmands ahead of their time.

There’s nothing too exotic about “Chicken Shortcake Eileen,” a chicken cooked with grape jelly and sherry, and topped with a biscuit crust, but the dish is tasty. This was fortunate for Lillian’s husband, who told newspapers that she made the recipe weekly for months leading up to the cooking contest.

Harold beamed with pride over his wife’s win, telling the Morning News his hopes that her recipe could be sold as a pre-made TV dinner. “Can you imagine a package with her picture and the tempting dish inside? I don’t see how it could miss.”

Harold had his own trajectory. After Lillian’s Poultry Contest win, he eagerly entered the contest himself each year, to prove men could cook just as well.

Columnist Bill Frank used Harold’s story as an excuse to write a deranged screed about women’s cooking. According to Frank, women aren’t scientific enough to be good cooks. Women, he explained, “like to cheat on recipes.” And also women “giggle and chatter” too much. As it turned out, Frank had a bone to pick with the poultry contest. As a previous entrant, he’d been passed over. He claimed he was the victim of the “deep-rooted prejudice” of women judges.

I like to think that Harold wanted no part of Bill Frank’s sad sour grapes. My interpretation of newspaper interviews is that Harold approached the challenge of matching his wife’s accomplishments with humor. In 1964 he told the Frederick Maryland News that “the rules and regulations [were] made as strict as possible to ensure absolute fairness.” He also stated that he acquired a lot of his cooking knowledge from Lillian. For her part, Lillian lamented that Harold’s exercise in learning how to cook chicken left her with a lot of dishes to do.

Lillian recalled that she began to develop recipes because of the chicken farm, and the News reported that many of them had been reprinted in pamphlets and brochures. Lillian boasted a collection of more than 100 spices, seasonings, and herbs. “If no one moves them,” she said, clearly referring to Harold, “I can put my hands right on what I want” without looking. In addition to her prize-winning recipe, the story printed another in which the chicken pieces are coated in matzoh meal, grated sharp cheese, garlic powder, salt, pepper, curry powder, paprika, and parsley, and baked.

In 1959, Harold won the contest in the barbecue division and got at least an honorable mention for his recipe for “Easy Fancy Delmarvalous Chicken” in 1962.

Winning the contest wasn’t Harold’s only pursuit. He parlayed his love of poultry and waterfowl into something bigger, with the “Geese for Peace” program. He proposed that the Peace Corps supply geese to poor countries to be raised as livestock. Around 1961, geese and ducks from the Weisberg’s farm were sent to Liberia. This resulted in news headlines like “Geese Join Peace Corps.” It was some of the first press that President Kennedy’s newly-established Peace Corps received.

That same year, the Weisbergs sued the government for damages after low-flying aircraft allegedly caused the chickens on Coq d’Or farm to panic and smother one another. They were awarded $750 for damages, although the judge’s opinion of the case reflected a lot of skepticism, and referred to Harold as an unreliable witness.

Harold’s research and personal archives were donated to Hood College, and are available online. They include his winning barbecue recipe. I’ll have to make it sometime. It will give me an excuse to write more about him, and his obsession with the Kennedy assassination, which produced seven books and a fair amount of newspaper coverage, not all of it glowing. His obsession with uncovering the conspiracies caused years of financial struggle.

For all his eccentricities, Lillian stuck by Harold until his 2002 death. Newspapers referred to him as a “critic of the Warren Commission.”

Lillian herself passed in 2003. Her obituary stated that she was “a very strong supporter of the Native American Indians Society and as a Democratic party supporter.”

Lillian’s friend Eileen Young won fifth place in the 1957 contest. The first-place win went to a singer and actress from New York, Camille Ashland. A decade later, Ashland would be the toast of Broadway, earning a Tony Award nomination for her performance in “Black Comedy/White Lies.” In June 1957, it was enough to be the toast of Salisbury, “the hub and center of the whole great poultry industry not only of the Shore alone, but the nation as well.”*

Recipe:

• 2 2.5-3lb broiler fryers, cut up (leave thigh and drumstick in one piece, remove bony rib and split breasts down center)
• .5 Cup flour
• 2 Teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon paprika
• 3 Tablespoon shortening
• .25 Cup water
• .5 Cup Concord jelly, grape
• .25 Cup dry sherry

Sift flour, salt and paprika into paper bag, add pieces of chicken, shake well, then saute in hot fat until golden brown. Add water, cover and steam until tender (approximately 15 minutes) and no liquid remains. Remove from skillet and arrange attractively in oven dish. [Note: I deboned and shredded the chicken —K] Cover with the jelly which has been partially melted and diluted with the wine. While chicken is steaming, prepare short dough as follows:

• 2 Cup sifted flour
• 2 Teaspoon baking powder
• .5 Teaspoon salt
• .5 Cup hot water
• .333 Cup butter
• .333 Cup shortening (preferably chicken fat)
• 1 egg yolk

Sift together the dry ingredients — combine other ingredients, mixing with fork until fat is in pieces the size of peas. Stir into dry mixture, blending well and knead on lightly floured surface. Pat out to 1/2 inch thickness in shape to fit oven dish and fit over chicken. Bake in 425-450 oven about 30-40 minutes or until topping is baked. Turn out on serving platter.

Recipe from 1971 National Chicken Cooking Contest Cookbook. Delmarva Poultry Industry. Inc.

*This quote comes from a hilariously biased op-ed written by Sterling White, president of Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., which the Salisbury Daily Times printed in its entirety