My first inklings of Maryland’s varied Easter traditions came from the Southern Heritage Cookbook Library. A menu for a “Southern Maryland Easter Dinner” featured Southern Maryland Stuffed Ham, Creamed Red Potatoes, Baked Tomato Halves, Frilly Deviled Eggs, Biscuits Supreme and Cardinal Pudding. It features this apocryphal account of Stuffed Ham:
Of course as with many such things, Southern Maryland stuffed ham has a likely slave origin. Stuffed Ham was new to me but as I sampled the various offerings of Raleys, Murphy’s, WJ Dent and other local purveyors, it fast became a favorite. Much has been written about stuffed ham, with more to come, and it will certainly be revisited on Old Line Plate (i hope!).
- Southern Maryland Stuffed Ham on hearthcook.com
- NY Times article on Easter traditions including Stuffed Ham
- another NY Times article on Stuffed Ham
As fats get eaten up for Lent you will find an array of delicious doughnuts hit the scene. Recipes for fasnachts appear in several old Maryland cookbooks, sometimes under varied names like “fost nock”, or fossnock. Bafflingly, fasnachts go by the name of “Kinkling” in the Frederick area. Not bafflingly, they receive much fanfare.
Baltimore’s large Eastern European population offered contributions and variations on Easter Season menu. Burgersub introduced me to Pączki, another kind of doughnut, for sale in Baltimore. You just have to know where to look.
- In Baltimore, the Polish presence may be dwindling, but it still persists (Washington Post)
- Easter traditions carry on in Baltimore’s Ukrainian community (video)
“The cry of “Who’s got an egg?” would bring youngsters out of their homes, ready to do battle with hard-boiled eggs dyed in shades of blue and pink and yellow.
The game, which today endures around Easter tables in certain families, worked like this:
One kid wrapped a fist around his egg, leaving only the point exposed through a hole between his thumb and index finger. The challenger used the point of his egg to aggressively tap his foe’s egg until one of the shells cracked. The eggs were then turned over and the game repeated with the butt end of the eggs.
The stronger egg would usually win at both ends, and the owner of the weaker egg would forfeit the ovum that had failed him. If there was a draw, the uncracked point would battle the uncracked butt. The loser surrendered his egg.
‘Picking eggs was a big thing around the neighborhoods, I don’t really know where it started,’ said Gene DeCarlo Sr., 68, who keeps the tradition alive in Highlandtown with his grandchildren. ‘You’ve got to remember, in them days eggs weren’t as plentiful as they are now. You won a hard-boiled egg from another kid – that was something good to eat.’
Old-timers remember the sight of champions running the alleys with the pockets of their Easter Sunday trousers bulging with eggs.
‘I think picking eggs was just something they did around Baltimore,’ said Dorothy Kraft, 68, who grew up on Decker Avenue. ‘I never heard of out-of-towners doing it.’
For generations it was part of local Easter along with cakes that looked like chickens and lumps of butter shaped like lambs; pre-dawn street processions with Easter lilies; taking baskets of food to church to be blessed; boys chasing girls on Easter Monday – known to some as “dingus day” – to beat them on the legs with switches; sunrise services at Memorial Stadium; and the annual Easter parades along Charles Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.”
– Good Eggs And Nice Memories Of Easter (Baltimore Sun)
There’s a lot more to Maryland than Catholicism and a lot more Easter traditions to look into but its kind of hard to tear myself away from hams and doughnuts.
Southern Maryland Easter Dinner. Images: Southern Heritage Cookbook Library