It may be impossible to know how many lesser-known Maryland cookbooks have been published and lost to time.
I’ve spent many hours obsessively searching the internet, library catalogs, bibliographies, and bookstores for titles to add to my list – especially anything from the 19th century or close to it.
A search of digitized newspapers once turned up the following snippet:
Staunton Spectator, 1902
This began a crazed search to locate a copy of the book. I couldn’t find much and I was disheartened. Months later I had a book pulled at the Maryland Historical Society and as I began to index it, it dawned on me… this was that book I’d read about!
Within its 790 recipes I found some interesting ones. There are three recipes for possum: “Roast Possum,” “Roast Possum (Maryland Style),” and “Roast Possum (Virginia Style).” There’s parsnip wine, “pineappleade,” banana frozen like ice cream, plus Baltimore favorites like sour beef, coddies, and crabcakes.
The book was printed in 1902. The 19th century still loomed large. There are many familiar favorites – forcemeat balls for soup, spinach a la creme, cabbage pudding, deviled crabs, etc.
From what I can tell of the “Maryland Cook Book”s author, Mrs. E. J. Strasburg, her own life changed with the times as well. She was born in 1850 to Conrad H. Kite and Caroline Allenbaugh. According to the 1850 census, the Kites enslaved at least three people. Other Kite extended family members are listed as owning a dozen more slaves. Many more (numbers – no names are given, sadly) are listed under the connected Miller family. The Miller–Kite House in Elkton, VA served as a headquarters for Stonewall Jackson during the Valley Campaign of 1862.
As a bizarre aside, there is a bit of local lore about Emma’s father. He died in 1858 and was buried in a cast-iron casket. In 1882 the family decided to move him to Thornrose Cemetery in Staunton. According to news articles at the time Kite was exhumed, the body had barely decayed in the 24 years it was underground. “The brother of the deceased was startled to see that the face looked just as it did the day the body was buried,” the Staunton Spectator reported. Apparently, a cedar tree had grown around the iron coffin and sealed it nearly air-tight.
David E. Strasburg worked for the Staunton Spectator as a typesetter. During the Civil War, he’d fought for the Confederacy for a few years “in the ranks” and rode out the final years of the war as a founding member of the “Stonewall Brigade Band.” In 1869, 31-year old David E. Strasburg married Emma Kite, who was 19 at the time. The couple and their four children moved to Baltimore around 1883.
David E. Strasburg with the Stonewall Brigade Band
The family began to take in boarders in the early 1890s, placing ads in the Staunton Spectator encouraging Baltimore visitors to stay with the Strasburgs. I don’t know whether this was financial or what. David died in 1895. The 1900 census lists a family of three boarding with Mrs. Strasburg, in addition to her daughter, son-in-law and their child.
And then there is the cookbook. The Woman’s Industrial Exchange was founded in 1880 with the mission of helping women earn money by selling items. On the other hand, a scathing 1898 editorial in the Sun claimed that the Exchange was primarily benefitting the already wealthy.
The reason I am so curious about Mrs. Strasburg’s finances is the context it might provide for her cookbook. Was she intending to emulate wealthy authors like Mrs. B. C. Howard with the prestige of compiling a book? Did she need the money? Did she donate proceeds to a charitable cause?
Alas, we will never know. Emma Strasburg died in May of 1902, just months after the book’s publication. Her name stayed in the papers as her daughter attempted to sue University of Maryland hospital over their negligent treatment of Emma, who’d had her left arm amputated due to cancer in her shoulder. Still under the influence of ether, Mrs. Strasburg was left in the room with a hot water bottle which badly burned her leg, prolonging her recovery. Ultimately, the judge found the University of Maryland not liable.
The Strasburg’s gravesite, findagrave.com
A lot of Mrs. Strasburg’s recipes tempted me. The sour beef recipe (attributed to her daughter) looks interesting. “Egg Lemonade” is a beverage I’ll have to try. “Siberian Punch” is a weird frozen concoction of whipped cream, meringue, and brandy.
I opted to make a gumbo recipe because okra is so plentiful this time of year. Many people don’t think of okra as a Maryland vegetable but the markets are flooded with it in August and September, and many old cookbooks feature recipes for okra soups and gumbo variants like this one. It may not be recognizable as a Louisiana gumbo, but the name ‘gumbo’ may derive from “ki ngombo,” a Niger–Congo term that many enslaved people would have used to refer to okra.
Strasburg’s recipe infuriatingly instructs the cook to use onion to flavor the frying fat and then to discard it. I disgruntledly removed the onion but I did save it for other use. I substituted rabbit meat for the chicken, making sure to include extra fat to make up for it. I also added a little shrimp powder for additional flavor. Many old Maryland gumbo recipes include crab or oysters.
I ended up with a huge amount of an okay stew. This recipe could be completely satisfying under certain circumstances – use a good chicken, cook over a campfire, and leave in the damn onion (throw in some garlic while you’re at it.)
Sadly, the copy of the “Maryland Cook Book” at the Maryland Historical Society is brittle and crumbling into dust. Miraculously, I eventually purchased a copy of this book for $15. It too is in danger of falling apart, but I donated the book to MDHS in hope that it can be preserved, and eventually, digitized for posterity.
Recipe:
- 1 onion
- 1 chicken
- flour
- 1 Quart okra
- 1 Quart water or stock
- cold veal or ham
- 1 Quart tomatoes, peeled and sliced
- salt & pepper
- corn
- lima beans
- green pepper
- 1 Tb butter
- rice
“Fry an onion in lard or some good bacon fat; drain out the fried onion and throw it away. In the fat fry a chicken which has been cut into pieces and well floured. Put the chicken in a soup pot. In this same fat fry 1 quart of sliced okra. Put the okra in the pot with chicken, and cover with 1 quart of hot water, or better still, stock, if you have it on hand. If you have any pieces of cold meat – veal or ham – put them also into the pot, and let all stew slowly. When about half done, add 1 quart of tomatoes (peeled and sliced), salt and pepper to taste; also corn, lima beans, 1 green pepper and a large tablespoonful of butter. Thin, if required, with little hot water. Serve with boiled rice. Gumbo must not be cooked fast; it requires from 4 to 6 hours to cook properly.“
Recipe from “Maryland Cook Book,” by Mrs. E. J. Strasburg
