“Some one has said that every big man has a hobby,” according to an article in the Baltimore Sun in 1915. “Willoughby M. McCormick is no exception to the rule… He has two hobbies that go together. One is food quality in connection with food purity, and the other is domestic science, or the science of cookery. Under his direction [McCormick Spice Company] has published a splendid manual of Cookery.”
McCormick’s Manual of Cookery was first published in the early 1910s. By 1914, it was retitled “Bee Brand Manual of Cookery: The Blue Book of The Culinary Art.”
The 1915 article in the Baltimore Sun boasted that the manual was “full of recipes from the best cooks of Maryland and the Virginias, in which dishes are preserved from the Colonial period—dishes which gave the South the gastronomic championship of the world.” Once again, “Colonial” was used as a euphemism for antebellum times. Even the McCormick cookery book capitalized on a romanticized vision of Southern hospitality.
McCormick shared some interesting opinions in the article. He didn’t think the Pure Foods law went far enough. His brand, he said, used more vanilla than legally required in their extract. He liked for consumers to visit his plant downtown to get firsthand confidence in his products. “Each consumer is our personal customer,” he said. He felt that “purity and quality and preparation of food are at the bottom of the misery or happiness of a nation of people.”
McCormick believed that men should teach their daughters about finance. “They do that nicely, over in France,” he said. “In this country women spend money as if it were nothing.” As an example, he mentioned women who bought artificial vanilla extract “from old women and cripples who peddle from door to door.” The Sun entitled this section of the article “Spending Money Foolishly.”
The article’s writer visited that McCormick plant and was enchanted. “A journey through the McCormick house would pay anyone who desired swift transportation from the humdrum modern business life to the atmosphere of the Far East, with its romance and fragrances,” they wrote, describing the plant as “the Kingdom of the Sounds of Odors, where very delight wafted to the nostrils is a song or a poem.”
The Bee Brand Manual of Cookery was marketed in at least a few newspapers around the country, and in the Boston Cooking School magazine. The ads within the Bee Brand Manual itself show what a wide variety of products once bore the McCormick name, from glue to insect poison to tea to tapioca.
The book opens with soup, starting with “Almond Soup,” made from almonds, celery, milk, stock, onions, and of course 1 teaspoon Bee Brand Whole White Peppers. A “Things Worth Knowing” section contains tips for removing stains and treating burns, mad dog and snake bites. Beneath a recommended procedure for reviving a person who has fainted, the book gives “Tests of Death:”
“Hold mirror to mouth. If living, moisture will gather. Push pin into flesh. If dead, the hole will remain, if alive it will close up.”
Although the different editions of the McCormick and Bee Brand Manuals have most of the same recipes, there were some minor changes. I made a Ginger Pound Cake recipe that appeared in the c. 1912 McCormick’s Manual of Cookery but was removed from later editions, probably to make room for other spices. The McCormick’s manual has a dozen recipes centered around ginger. The Bee Brand book has half that.
The paper that most cookbooks were printed on in the early 20th century tends to be fairly frail. As such, there are not too many copies of the Bee Brand Manual in libraries or for sale. I took it upon myself to scan mine for the Internet Archive. I figured the more people who know a reliable “test of death,” the better. It is, after all, a thing worth knowing.
Recipe:
- .75 Cup butter
- 1 Cup sugar
- 1 Cup molasses
- 3 Cups flour
- .5 Teaspoon baking soda
- 1 Cup milk
- 2 eggs
- 1 Teaspoon Bee Brand ground cloves
- 1 Teaspoon Bee Brand ground cinnamon
- 1 Tablespoon Bee Brand ground ginger
Beat butter and sugar till creamy, then add eggs well beaten, molasses, flour, soda dissolved in milk, and spices. Turn into buttered and floured cake tin and bake in moderate oven for one hour.
Recipe from McCormick’s Manual of Cookery. c. 1912.
