Many home cooks dream of achieving what Emily Frances Kitching did. Kitching’s Smith Island boardinghouse was no restaurant. Guests ate at a set time. Meals were served at communal dinner tables. There wasn’t a menu to choose from – there was a smorgasbord of seafood soups or chowders; crab cakes; clam fritters; ham; hot rolls; stewed vegetables; pickled carrots; macaroni, bean or potato salads; corn pudding; iced tea. No one went hungry. Guests kept coming, and word spread. Frances Kitching achieved culinary fame on her own terms.
While some credit Kitching with the invention of Smith Island Cake, a recipe for the cake does not appear in the original 1981 edition of “Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Kitchen.” Still, there can be little debate that Kitching’s food was synonymous with Smith Island cooking. What began as a way to feed the men who were installing electricity on the secluded island in the 1950s became a force that attracted outsiders to experience life on Smith Island.
In a 1981 Washington Post article about Mrs. Kitching, food writer Joan Nathan declared that “Frances Kitching is a slow starter in the kitchen,” strolling into her world-famous kitchen with a cigarette, waiting until the last minute to prepare some fried fish. “The last minute is when she spies from her kitchen window the ‘Captain Jason’ ferry approaching,” Nathan wrote.
Frances Kitching in the Wilmington Evening Journal, 1978
Despite her stated requirement that guests provide advance notice of their expected party number, Kitching made sure that everyone who visited her was well fed. A 1978 review of Kitching’s boardinghouse food, written by Kathy Canavan in the Wilmingon Delaware News Journal, described a busy Frances Kitching recovering from serving lunch to 18 guests when she’d expected four. “It would break my heart for someone to leave here and say they wasn’t satisfied,” she remarked. “It really would.”
Reviews often wrote of the crab cakes, just one of many crab dishes served in a meal. Her soups and chowders – made with evaporated milk – were famous. Kitching’s culinary oeuvre encompassed all courses of a meal down to her pickled carrots. In her cookbook, cooked carrots are marinated in a mixture of French dressing, tomato soup, mustard, paprika, vinegar and brown sugar. Visitors from the press almost always mentioned them. For dessert, she served homemade pies or cakes. She often used the figs and pomegranates that still grow on the island today.
Frances Kitching became so synonymous with Smith Island cooking that, when I visited the island in 2015, I detected that her rivalries with competing restauranteurs had outlived her. Kitching died in 2003 at the age of 84. Her boardinghouse had been closed for 16 years, but her reputation had hardly waned.
I recently made this “Ham Potato Salad Loaf” from her cookbook. I was drawn to its aspic-like composition. When I couldn’t get the kind of ham that I prefer, I decided to go with the drama of laying out slices of ham instead of using chopped ham as per Mrs. Kitching’s instructions. Despite my ridiculous presentation, the potato salad was well-liked. I don’t think Mrs. Kitching would have approved of my shortcut. Nor would she approve of the beers I had alongside it. “[Drinkers] were in no condition to enjoy and appreciate good cooking,” she was once quoted as saying.
Now that Smith Island Cake is the State Dessert of Maryland, Kitching’s name lives on in relation to it, even if her invention of the cake is disputed. At any rate, it wasn’t the cake that visitors wrote about. It was her many ways with the seafood that sustained the island’s economy. It was her memorable personality – Kitching ensured that her guests were well fed and treated, but she did not suffer fools, or would-be violators of Smith Island’s prohibition of alcohol – lightly.
Recipe:
- 6 oz chopped ham
- 1 envelope gelatin
- .5 Cup water
- 1 Cup mayonnaise
- 1 Teaspoon salt (& other seasonings to taste)
- 1 Teaspoon minced onion
- .25 Cup parsley
- .25 Teaspoon red and/or green pepper
- 4 stalk celery, diced
- 4 Cups cooked potato, diced
Line a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan with foil or lightly grease a similar-sized mold. Line the bottom and sides of the mold with ham. Dissolve gelatin in warm water. Gently stir together gelatin and remaining ingredients. Pack mixture into mold and chill until set. Turn out on to a cold platter. Garnish with lettuce and tomatoes. (Man I really should have done that, it would have looked a lot better!- ed.)
Recipe adapted from “Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Cookbook” by Frances Kitching and Susan Stiles Dowell
