Egg Flake Soup, M. Henri Casalegno

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The Baltimore Sun advertised in April of 1909 that they would be running two features in their Sunday editions, with soup recipes from M. Henri Casalegno, a former chef at the Maryland Club. That credential was apt to make Baltimore housewives pay attention. H.L. Mencken certainly knew that when he gave the chef the freelance writing assignments. Mencken later recalled that the Italian-born chef’s articles were “done in very fair English.”

Caselagno did not apparently hold the “housewife cook” in high regard. “The failures of the housewife cook are often due to her failure properly to season the food she cooks,” he wrote. To be fair to Casalegno, a preachy condescending tone was the norm for cookery advice of the day. Casalegno may simply have been embellishing his prowess by emulating others. It wouldn’t be the last time he did so.

Caselagno had been working as a chef in hotel kitchens since his arrival in the U.S. in 1904. In his first stateside position at the Hotel Renssalaer in Troy New York, he’d had a quarrel with another chef, Paul Lescaux. The altercation resulted in Lescaux’s death. According to Caselagno, Lescaux had lunged at him, landing with a knife in the heart. Caselagno served four years in prison for this “accident,” before finding his way into the Maryland Club and the Baltimore Sun columns.

What came after is somehow even more bizarre.

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Casalegno moved to New York and began to go by the name Henry Woodhouse (a translation of his Italian name). In Woodhouse’s new life, he conjured up lofty credentials in the then relatively new field of aviation.
He went on to write countless articles about aviation and built a name as a foremost expert. He helped found the American Society of Aeronautic Engineering. He wrote books on aviation and expressed prescient opinions on the use of aircraft in commerce, mail delivery, and war.

In 1920, there was a lot of drama within the Aero Club of America, of which Henry was an early and influential member. Factions split, lawsuits were filed, Henry made some questionable claims (including possibly forging 400 signatures to sway a vote), and eventually, he was shamed with the resurrection of his criminal past.

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A pariah in the aviation world, Woodhouse moved on to oil speculation. He formed a syndicate called the Ottoman American Development Company to procure oil from Turkey. Ultimately, he probably didn’t profit much due to political turmoil and divisions in Turkey. That fact didn’t stop him from bragging:

“In later years, Woodhouse inflated this episode to Herman Herst Jr., a philatelic authority and fellow collector. ‘Another one of my big coups was when I utilized a little fact I picked up from the Bible. I had read a biblical tale about fire shooting out of the earth in Mesopotamia. That meant only one thing to me—oil! I talked Standard Oil into looking into the matter and of course they discovered oil. They gave me a royalty from every barrel taken out of the Near East oil fields.'” – “I’m Working on a Million Dollar Deal”: A Biographical Essay on Henry Woodhouse by Jerry Kuntz

Woodhouse was a multifaceted man with interests beyond oil, aviation, and cooking. He was also an avid collector of American historical artifacts, particularly those associated with George Washington. Many of his Washington-related collections were donated to the Library of Congress. The Henry Woodhouse collection contains letters, maps, land grants and more relating to the first President of the United States. While most of these items are legitimate, Woodhouse may have sold some artifacts of more questionable origin. He worked with a Washington descendant, W. Lanier Washington, to add the family crest to items for sale. He also worked with a painter of fake portraits.

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Perhaps the longest-running interest in Woodhouse’s life, from his aviation days to his twilight years, was litigation. He’d threatened the Aero Club of America with legal action. He copyrighted aviation terms and successfully sued the creators of the Clara Bow movie “Wings” for $25,000. In the 1950s, he tried to sue General Electric for stealing ideas that he’d suggested by mail. Around the same time, he countersued an employee of his who was suing him for wage theft. He claimed the woman, Tamara Bourkoun, was using him to get to his prominent clients to offer them fortune-telling services. The cases dragged on for years. The court ruled with Bourkoun.

When Woodhouse died in 1970, he had over thirty-five pending lawsuits.

The Egg Flake Soup, by the way, was fine. Any soup like this is going to taste as good as the broth you use. The recipe is very similar to Stracciatella, a soup from Woodhouse’s home country of Italy. Among the other recipes he shared in the Sun are recipes for pea soup, vegetable soup, barley soup, [French] onion soup, as well as the more Maryland-centric oyster and crab soups. Whether they came from Henri’s own mind, the Maryland Club or -who knows?- the unfortunate chef who fell on Woodhouse’s knife that fateful day, the M. Henri Casalego soup recipes are an interesting side note in varied and unusual life.

Recipe:

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• 4 Cups boiling water
• beef extract/bouillon
• 3 eggs, beaten
• salt
• pepper

“This soup can be made in 10 minutes and is just the thing when company arrives unexpectedly; Flavor four cups of boiling water with meat extract and bring to a boil. Beat well in a bowl three eggs; pour them in the soup; let stand one minute for the eggs to cook; then stir well to break the eggs into flakes. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve very hot. On account of the eggs and the beef extract, a teaspoonful of which is equivalent to one pound of meat, this soup is very nourishing. Egg flake soup can also be made with fresh beef or chicken broth; then the meat extract should be omitted.”

Recipe from the Baltimore Sun, “The Secrets of Good Soup Making” by Henri Casalegno, [“Late of the Maryland Club”], April 4, 1909

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