Cracklin Bread, Glen Albin

Easter was almost two months ago, but the fat from the stuffed ham I made has been living on in my kitchen. After rendering lots of lard of varying purity, I’ve learned just how much flavor it can impart when used for sautéing, and how the very faint meatiness actually adds welcome complexity to a flaky tender pie crust. My allegiance to butter is in question – at least until I’ve worked my way through the last of my home-rendered lard.

The rendering process left me with a bowlful of finely-ground pork cracklings, too small to snack on but suitable for cornbread.

The recipe I chose comes from a typewritten manuscript found at the American Antiquarian Society, and available digitally, entitled “Cookbook of Maryland and Virginia Recipes.” This mysterious manuscript contains some recipes that appear in other collections like “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland,” plus others that I haven’t seen elsewhere. Culinary Historian Karen Hess took a look at the manuscript and wrote some notes about its possible date of creation, but she did not recognize the book as anything that had seen publication. That was in 1981 – the year I was born. I’m no Karen Hess but I have the advantage of the digital age. I’ll save my research into this interesting little book for another post.

I chose this recipe primarily because it had a huge ratio of cracklings – maybe impractical for other uses, but this cornbread was for topping chili.

Cookbook of Maryland and Virginia Recipes, American Antiquarian Society

The manuscript attributes the recipe to the Chapman family of Glen Albin, a tobacco plantation in Charles County.

I’m not sure which family member shared the recipe, but the Chapman family has history in the area dating at least to the 1700s. Many different names have been associated with the farm property. In 1890, the farm was inherited by William B.S. (Briscoe Stone) Chapman (1866-1945). William married Nannie Dorsett Matthews (1868-1941) in 1896. The farm remained in the family until Nannie and William died.

Glen Albin Farm in 1999, Maryland Historical Trust

At least 70 people were enslaved by the Chapman family in the 1850s.

Cracklings and crackling bread were already associated with enslaved people in the antebellum era. In Cincinnatti, Ohio, where the production of lard had become industrialized, the Daily Press printed an article in 1859 entitled “What Becomes of the ‘Cracklings!’” The article reported that industrially-produced cracklings had been used in the manufacture of ‘prussiate of potash’, and that some cracklings were sent to England to be fed to hunting hounds. The hounds apparently would not eat them. German immigrants fed cracklings to their hogs, who only ate them when they were offered nothing else. The article went on to report that the price of cracklings had gone up as slavers bought them to send to southern and Cuban plantations, as a cheaper alternative to corn or rice. The writer declared them-self to be “no Abolitionist” but stated that requiring people to eat “what the very dogs in England refuse, is a HARD CASE.”

A reader responded the next day with the claim that “cracklings are regarded as a luxury both by the planter and his slave,” while pointing out there are plenty of palatable foods that dogs will not eat.

The whole exchange demonstrates the futility of debating the finer points of something that is morally reprehensible to begin with.

Grain sheds on Glen Albin property. There may be a slave burial site to the right of the sheds. Maryland Historical Trust photo.

A 1908 Baltimore Sun article declared a lavish ball at Glen Albin farm to be “one of the most delightful entertainments of the season.” The house was described as “one of the Colonial type” with a “spacious hall, and double parlors” which made an ideal ballroom. “The extensive lawn and driveways were beautifully illuminated by Japanese lanterns, and the whole effect of the scene was most bewitching.” This would have been around the time that the recipe manuscript was compiled.

Shortly thereafter, the house burned down. Its replacement is one of the mail-order type houses of the era. Built in 1920, the house came from the “Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan,” according to a Maryland Historical Trust document. Many of the enslaved people who built wealth for the Campbells are buried on the property in unmarked graves.