Although Maryland’s history of celebrated restaurants, hotels and caterers may have influenced the cuisine that we enjoy to this day, there are very few recipes that can be directly tied to the early chefs.
Chefs tended to work more intuitively and from experience. Recipes – even the relatively vague ones found in 19th-century cookbooks, simply weren’t necessary.
By the time Frederick Phillip Stieff and others began to transcribe and collect recipes from famed establishments, a generation of Baltimore caterers had come and gone.
Instead, that legacy is woven throughout the recipes collected by well-to-do housewives and circulated in church cookbooks, eventually passing traces of restaurant prestige into everyday meals.
The name of one specific restaurant does appear in many Maryland recipe manuscripts, church and corporate cookbooks alike, and is not a Maryland restaurant at all.
Delmonico’s in 1903, Detroit Publishing Co., loc.gov
New York as a restaurant hub may seem like a given to us today, but when John and Peter Delmonico opened a pastry shop there in 1827, New York was not at all considered a cultural capital or refined place. The growing city was a hub of trade with occasional rioting and fires. A growing class of newly wealthy merchants mingled with “old money” to provide Delmonico’s with a steady clientele.
It was Lorenzo Delmonico who is credited with building the Delmonicos empire into a stalwart of fine dining that reigned over the gilded age. Lorenzo arrived from Switzerland to join his uncle’s growing business in 1831. Other Delmonico family members quickly followed, but Lorenzo had an outsized influence on the restaurant, and by extension, American dining.
Delmonico’s is credited with being one of the first restaurants in America to offer a la carte dining instead of a fixed menu. Lorenzo as manager created an atmosphere where diners enjoyed luxurious and leisurely meals. The allure proved hard to resist, despite a prevailing American culture of “mistrust” for snobbery and “Old World vices.”*
The Epicurean, Charles Ranhofer, 1893
Harpers weekly referred to Delmonicos as an “agency of civilization” in 1884. The restaurant was visited by many of the admired figures who visited the U.S. in the 19th century, including Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, and Jenny Lind, who allegedly dined there after each of her New York shows.
In 1871, Grand Duke Alexis of Russia visited the United States and was honored with a lavish meal at Delmonico’s. Head Chef Charles Ranhofer produced a twelve-course menu for the event, primarily composed of fine French food, including a special consommé of his own invention. Although the menu was dominated by French cuisine, Terrapin à la Maryland and canvasback duck also made an appearance. If patriotic Maryland cooks couldn’t resist the prestige of Delmonicos, perhaps the feeling was mutual.
Ranhofer, who immigrated from France, was a third-generation chef, trained in French kitchens from adolescence. He was hired to work at Delmonicos in 1862. Unlike many of his contemporary chefs and caterers, he didn’t see a need to be reserved with his recipes and techniques. In 1893 he produced “The Epicurean”, a cookbook of over 3700 recipes plus a record of past menus (including the meal served to Duke Alexis), advice on procuring seasonal produce, plus illustrations of elaborate table settings and kitchen apparatuses. The index alone is 45 pages. Delmonico’s manager Leopold Rimmer remarked that Ranhofer had given away all the “secrets of the house.”
The Delmonico Cook Book, Alessandro Filippini, 1889
Ranhofer’s book, with its many mother sauces and kitchen equipment illustrations, was written towards an audience of culinary professionals. Another Delmonico’s chef, Alessandro Filippini, had published a book in 1889 that was geared more towards housewives and home cooks.
I recently had some friends over and did my best to recreate some of the recipes from both books. I also chose two “Delmonico” recipes from my Maryland cookbooks.
Delmonico potatoes date back to the early days of the restaurant. Essentially escalloped potatoes seasoned with a little nutmeg and sometimes some parmesan, the potatoes are sometimes cut into cubes or sliced, peeled or not. I worked primarily from a recipe from 1888, found in “The Practical Cook Book” by a Baltimore woman named Mrs. J. H. Giese.
Recipes named “Delmonico Pudding” appear in several books spanning the late 1800s through the 1940s. There is a great deal of variation in formula. In the 1900 “Tested Maryland Recipes,” a gelatin-based pudding is alternately layered with cherries and macaroons. I opted for a more simple version from 1894, from “Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s Maryland And Virginia Cookbook.” Mrs. Gibson’s recipe is simply a lightly sweetened vanilla custard made with both eggs and cornstarch, topped with a more highly sweetened meringue.
Ranhofer & Filippini portraits from their respective books
Unsurprisingly, I was unable to trace these recipes to either Ranhofer or Filippini’s books. The most enduring and far-reaching of the recipes from Ranhofer’s tome might deserve its own post at some point – Lobster A La Newburg. I have 23 recipes for it, spanning the late 1800s up through 1985. We’ll save that for another post… and an occasion befitting lobster.
The Delmonico family coincidentally sold their restaurant on the day that Prohibition was enacted. The timing was fitting. Although the business had already been in decline, the inability to bank on alcohol sales spelled the death of the restaurant, which closed its doors in 1923. A later incarnation was opened in 1926 by Oscar Tucci. Tucci’s reign was successful, and the restaurant operated in various locations until 1987. Still, even the latter-day recipes in my collection hail from the Ranhofer & Filippini eras. For over a century, home cooks have made and shared these chef’s recipes, and in doing so, have kept the Delmonico mystique alive.
Recipes:
Delmonico Potatoes:
“Boil the potatoes with skins on. When cold peel, and slice them thin. Put in a shallow pie dish. Scald scant pint of milk with one and a-half tablespoonsful of butter rubbed with the same quantity of flour. Salt, and scald. Pour over the potatoes and bake twenty minutes. They must brown.”
Recipe from “The Practical Cook Book,” 1888, Mrs. J. H. Giese
Delmonico’s Pudding
“Five eggs, three tablespoonsful of pulverized sugar, two and one-half tablespoons of corn starch, two and one-half pints of sweet milk. Beat the eggs and sugar very light, leaving out three whites for the meringue. Stir in the corn starch; have the milk on boiling, and while it. is boiling stir in the mixture very rapidly. By the time it is all in it will be done; pour into your pudding dish, and put in the stove a minute. Add six tablespoons of pulverized sugar to the three whites, one-half teaspoon of vanilla, and beat to a stiff icing. Beat it in a bowl, and put it on the pudding, and brown it lightly. Add one teaspoonful of vanilla to the pudding before baking it. Let it get very cold and serve it with cold cream.”
Recipe from “Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s Maryland And Virginia Cookbook,” 1894, Mrs. Charles H. Gibson
* Much of the information for this post has been sourced from Paul Freedman’s excellent “Ten Restaurants that Changed America“