“In a very real sense, ‘Maryland’s Way’ is Alice Brown’s Way.” – Tom Coakley, The Capital, Annapolis, 1975
Last month, I finished reading Michael Twitty’s book “The Cooking Gene,” and I was planning to write a whole post about it. I found myself basically at a loss to convey any meaningful context other than simply recommending the book itself. I have been referring to it as ‘part history, part memoir, and part philosophy’ – with a good amount of expository information about the actual nature of DNA tests and genealogy.
You may be familiar with Twitty’s work as a historian if you are a regular reader. When I plumb the 18th and 19th – and even the 20th century recipes – that lay the foundation of Maryland food, I’m constantly faced with the gaping holes in our documented food experience – where enslaved cooks, poor cooks, immigrant and working-class cooks had shaped our collective food history or carved out their own spaces in Maryland food. Sometimes it’s lost completely. Sometimes we are able to unearth faint traces of the lives and work of these cooks on census records, property records, and surviving narratives. Occasionally, as in St. Mary’s County, we are lucky enough to have situations where citizens and historians acted to preserve these stories for the future.
Ultimately it is important to remember that a lot of the recipes I cook and write about were written by wealthy white women who were nostalgic for slavery. Whether there is still value to be found in them is up for debate. I suppose that I must think there is, because I keep cooking them.
When I found out about Michael Twitty’s work many years ago I couldn’t believe how fortunate we could be in Maryland to have a steward seeking out and compiling the evidence of the origins of our foodways. When his ‘Open Letter to Paula Deen’ went viral in 2013, Michael Twitty began to take on a role beyond historian, as an arbiter of that history and modern American food culture, with its many questions and contradictions.
Thanks to Twitty’s long-awaited book, we have a bit of a rough outline to start the process of acknowledging the many enslaved cooks whose hands and traditions shaped the American food that is inseparable from “our” traditions as a whole in multicultural Maryland.
Tulip Hill, Maryland Historical Trust
The other day, I cooked up this fried eggplant from “Maryland’s Way,” figuring that I would find something to write about Tulip Hill, a historic plantation home in Galesville, Maryland. The house was built around 1755 by Samuel Galloway, a Maryland slave trader who owned several plantations and enslaved at least 87 people on those properties in addition to the “Men, Women, Boys and Girls” whom he sold into slavery.
“…The roots of American soul food began… among the tidal creeks, coastal plain and rolling Piedmont hills in the colonial Chesapeake region between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries… About 20,000 [enslaved Africans] would be brought to the Catholic colony of Maryland, predominantly from Senegal, Gambia, Ghana and Kongo.” – Michael Twitty, The Cooking Gene
In 1948, Tulip Hill was purchased by Hope Andrews and her husband Lewis. In the 1960s, Mrs. Andrews worked closely with Mrs. Frances Kelly to compile “Maryland’s Way,” perhaps the most beloved of Maryland cookbooks. In 2015, I praised Maryland’s Way as a “gargantuan effort” and quoted an article about the five years that the ladies spent testing over 700 recipes for the cookbook.
The credit for the recipe for “Eggplant Fried in Batter”, and three others in “Maryland’s Way,” reads “Tulip Hill, West River, ‘Alice’s Way.’”
This mononymous accreditation is common in historic recipes that have been appropriated from servants and slaves (when a credit is given at all). You wouldn’t know it from reading my blog, but I always make an attempt to tease out these ghosts from census records and any other source I can find. I usually come up empty-handed. This particular recipe, having been contributed by Mrs. Andrews herself, proved to be an exception.
According to an account of “Maryland’s Way” in “Outlook By the Bay”, Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Andrews had assistance when they tested the many recipes included in the book:
“They compiled the recipes, but then needed to ensure that they were suitable for modern kitchens. Alice Brown, the cook at Tulip Hill, was tasked with testing them, and they found a willing taste-tester in Mrs. Andrews’ teenage nephew Harry Cannon. He vividly remembers Alice preparing all of the recipes as he eagerly watched, waiting to sample the results of her culinary endeavors. He still holds her partially responsible for his lifelong love of cooking and cookbook collecting.”
If this article is to be believed, Alice Brown tested and adjusted nearly all of the recipes in “Maryland’s Way.” These are Maryland recipes that have been duplicated in other books such as the Southern Heritage Cookbooks, reprinted in newspapers, and shared on the internet.
In 1975, the Capital in Annapolis ran a profile of Alice Brown. “We had to cut it all down to teaspoons and tablespoons from pounds,” Brown had said of the experience of interpreting the historic recipes. According to the Capital, Brown was the daughter of a tenant farmer from Lothian, Maryland. Although her mother hadn’t cooked for a living, she had “loved to prepare fine tasting dishes, and handed down that love to Alice,” who inherited her mother’s techniques and “a love of fresh farm foods.”
A photo accompanying the article shows a copy of the 19th century “Frugal Housekeeper’s Kitchen Companion”; a French cookbook; and a copy of “Aunt Priscilla in the Kitchen,” a compilation of the racist Baltimore Sun recipe columns of the same name.
Alice Brown in the Evening Capital, 1975. Hope Andrews bottom center.
The Capital mentions Alice’s husband’s name as Thomas and that they lived on Mill Swamp Road. Anything further is speculation on my part. An Alice Brown appears in the 1940 census in Anne Arundel county, where she is listed as a Black woman who was a servant for a “private family.” I found a 1940 military draft document for a Thomas Brown on Mill Swamp Road, whose wife is listed as Alice Rebecca Brown. Thomas Brown’s employment was with the Woodfield Fish & Oyster Company. There was an Alice Randall born in the early 1900’s in Lothian. That family did live on a farm but the patriarch was a blacksmith.
Andrews may have been affecting a historic norm when she attributed the recipe to “Alice” in “Maryland’s Way”. In doing so, she unwittingly perpetuated the erasure of the contributions of African Americans and of the ‘servant class’ to Maryland cooking.
In The Cooking Gene, Twitty directed a message to African Americans in particular: “We are not living in the past or for the past. Recognition, credit, acknowledgement, and the learning and transmission of the old ways are all critical. However, we need the best of our food culture as African people in America to move forward to give us opportunity… everything must be put on the table; our food is not just for us, it is a way into an alternative history and a new vision of who we can become.”
I think that regardless of ethnicity and genetic origin, everyone has a part in this. In addition to recognizing the legacy of the past in the food we eat today, we can all try to be more aware the ways in which well-meaning people can overlook existing inequality. I like to believe that we can learn from history without glorifying it.
Recipe:
- 1 Cup milk
- 1 medium eggplant
- garlic salt
- 1 egg
- 1 Cup flour
- .5 Teaspoon salt
- .125 Teaspoon black pepper
Slice eggplant thin lengthwise. Sprinkle lightly with garlic salt, stack under a weighted plate for ½ hour. Make a batter by beating the egg and stirring in the flour and remaining seasonings, alternating with the milk. Mix until smooth and bubbly. Drain eggplant and pat dry. Dip each slice in batter and fry until golden brown in hot oil.
Recipe Adapted from “Maryland’s Way”
