Harvey Salad Dressing, Miss Lulie P. Hooper

Bowl of Asian noodle soup with cabbage, sliced chili peppers, and fresh herbs on wooden surface

The 1936 “Lovely Lane Cook Book” produced by the historic Lovely Lane Methodist Church contains a lot of “dainty” recipes. There’s Date and Nut Bread; cakes and cookies; ice box rolls; Frozen Banana Salad. There’s luncheon dishes and cheese fondue and “Fruit Punch to Serve Ten.”

Like many church cookbooks, “Lovely Lane Cook Book” was full of recipes worthy of an elegant ladies’ luncheon or a bridge game with tea.

And then there is Lulie Hooper’s recipe for “Harvey Salad Dressing.” Beef bouillon; chopped olives, blue cheese, garlic, catsup, capers, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce. Hooper’s recipe is an umami bomb packed with sodium, acidity, and pungency. Though it seems vaguely Caeser dressing-inspired, this recipe takes things to another level.

It is likely that the dressing name is somehow related to Fred Harvey, a pioneer in railroad cuisine and later purveyor of a chain of restaurants. However, I couldn’t find any other version of this recipe among the recipes associated with Harvey.

Classic Art Deco interior with fluted columns, pendant lights, and round dining tables in elegant black and white. — *Fred Harvey’s Lunchroom at Chicago’s Union Station in 1943*

Miss Lulie Hooper was the granddaughter of Robert Poole, whose family had immigrated to Baltimore from Ireland when he was a child. Poole operated a foundry and machinery shop, which moved to Woodberry in 1853. With its location near the Northern Central Railway and the area’s many textile mills, Poole and his partner German Hunt did good business. The next year, the foundry would produce ironwork for the roof, dome and columns of the U.S. Capital building.

The expansion of the mills and the housing for their workers continued. By the Civil War, Woodberry was the largest industrial town in the state — outside of Baltimore.

Foundry and Machine Works of Poole & Hunt, Baltimore MD - historical industrial engraving showing 19th century factory with smokestacks

In 1888, Baltimore City expanded northward from its North Avenue border to encompass Woodberry and its surroundings. The annexation increased the city’s size from ten to thirty square miles.

William E. Hooper had founded the similarly successful Hooper Mills not far from Poole’s mills.

In 1871, Hooper’s son James Edward Hooper married Robert Poole’s daughter Sarah. James Hooper would eventually become the president of the merged Mount Vernon Woodberry Cotton Duck Company. Lulie Poole Hooper was the fourth of their six children.

Born into this wealthy family, Lulie pursued the typical charitable activities of a woman of her class and joined the Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, which took her on trips to Asia and the Pacific. She was educated at Goucher College, founded in 1885 by the Methodist Church, and with ample funding from the Poole-Hooper family. Lulie graduated in 1896 and remained involved with the college for the rest of her life, eventually having Hooper Hall named in her honor.

Lulie Poole Hooper

Margie Luckett included Lulie Hooper in “Maryland Women,” a three-volume collection of biographies of contemporary and historical women of the state published in 1931. Although most of the women in the books come from obvious wealth, there is no particular political bent to the collection. The activities and causes of the women profiled range from gracious entertaining to women’s suffrage. In Lulie’s case, Luckett didn’t have much to say other than to mention the missionary work and the college.

It is census records and Lulie’s obituary that lend a little dimension to Lulie’s story. By 1950, Lulie was living with her partner Gertrude Nickerson in an apartment building at 100 West University Parkway. Gertrude was also a Goucher graduate, from the class of 1899. When Hooper died in 1955, she left $5000 (today’s equivalent of roughly 60,000) in a trust to Nickerson.

Society pages through the years mentioned Lulie, Gertrude, or both in snippets that suggest a life of traveling and socializing with intellectuals, many of them Goucher alumni. Although I found no indication of suffrage activism on either of their parts, they would have interacted with Baltimore suffragettes, philanthropists, and patrons of the arts.

When Gertrude died in 1964, she was not buried at Greenmount with her partner, but in Pennsylvania with her parents.

Outside of some items that Lulie Hooper donated to Goucher College’s art collection, her contribution to the artistic and intellectual life of Baltimore in the early 19th century is largely undocumented. Thanks to her three additions to the Lovely Lane Cookbook —for Mint Sauce, Imperial Cake, and this salad dressing— we at least get a glimpse into her culinary world.