On the weekend of April 25th I headed to Lambertville, NJ for their Shadfest. There’s a few other shad related festivals, most notably the Shad-Planking in VA, but aside from that event sounding actually awful to be at, Lambertville promised me shad hauling demos. I thought I’d share some photos from that.
Shadfest cookies, C’Est La Vie cafe in New Hope, PA
There were shad puns aplenty.
Lambertville (and it’s across-the-river counterpart New Hope) seemed like a really nice little town although we did get threatened by this guy along the canal.
This family holds the only license to commercially fish for shad here.
They head up the river and cast a net and haul it in. It seemed grueling.
Shadfest is primarily an arts festival but I won’t hold it against them because I have a lot of experience with thematic street festivals and they rarely immerse you in their theme. (Kennet Square Mushroom Festival broke my heart in this way.)
Besides, on the car there and back we listened to “Shad: The Founding Fish” by John McPhee and basically we learned that throughout history, everyone hates shad.
The photos are lacking because I didn’t request a press pass. I didn’t know they had PRESS PASSES TO SHAD FEST. I wonder if I could make the cut.
Now that the mystique of cream gravy is lifted for me this recipe looked like a nice lazy entry, plus it has “Maryland” in the name for some reason. I’m not sure why that is although the recipe note in Maryland’s Way says “Dried, smoked beef, such as found in the Lexington Market Baltimore, should be scalded in this manner to remove some of the salt. Packaged chipped beef need not be first scalded.”
I searched Lexington Market and found no such thing so I bought a can of Hormel – and THEN I found a package of Esskay so that is what I ultimately used.
Nonetheless, please view this magical artful photo of the Hormel product on Wikipedia.
“Chippedbeefpacking” Dpbsmith at English Wikipedia
As for Esskay, it was founded in 1858 and became known as Esskay due to a consolidation in 1919 – Schluderberg and Kurdle (S and K) . They closed their Baltimore plant in 1993 because “its structure was not be strong enough to support 10-ton ham-boiling machines the company was planning add to its operations”.
I remember hearing their jingles on the radio during Orioles games growing up but I couldn’t find those jingles, only this amusing/gross video.
The internet didn’t turn up a precise origin story about creamed-chipbeef but the recipe I used is attributed to “The Up-To-Date Cook Book”, a community cookbook for St. Johns, a Montgomery County church, dated 1897. In that book it is known simply as “frizzled beef” or “creamed dried beef.”
Some diner I went to once had on their menu “S.O.S.” with the description “you know what this is.”
And indeed I do… its been a lifelong favorite, even though as a child I mostly got it from a plastic package that one BOILED and then emptied onto toast.
There is really not much else to say but I will take this opportunity to get on my soap-box and implore the world to stop serving up sub-par cream gravies. Gelatinous, flavorless, perhaps from a powdered mix.. being served now at a diner near you. Why? What is sacred if we can’t enjoy the magical simplicity of cream gravy?
Recipe:
.5 Lb beef, dried
2 Tablespoon butter
1 Tablespoon flour
2 Cup milk
toast
Shred beef and place in a frying pan. Add butter and cook until slightly frizzled. Sprinkle over flour and stir well; add milk, stirring constantly. It will thicken quickly. Pepper and serve on hot toast.
PS I served it with some spinach because vitamins.
In 2007, my friend hosted a “gross food” party. Everyone was requested to bring something from their childhood, a family favorite perhaps, something that might strike outsiders as a little gross. Ketchup Fried Rice was enjoyed. There was Ribs & Kraut. Some bozo who didn’t catch the net brought Popeyes. I took the opportunity to slice up a block of RAPA Scrapple, cook it to ideal crispness on each side, and then fold each slice in a piece of un-toasted white bread.
It was in this manner that scrapple was served at my grandparents’ trailer in Chincoteague, to a line of kids and about half as many adults before the tedious ritual of beach preparations or fishing trips.
Scrapple, Lexington Market
I checked with my grandmother and she says that she remembers eating scrapple her whole life. She also remembers ‘Panhas’ as a distinct but similar food from scrapple with a higher cornmeal content, whereas William Woys Weaver’s wonderful book “Country Scrapple” gives the impression that they are in fact the same thing.
My grandmother also stated that she believed scrapple originated in the South. This is a common misconception but scrapple is a Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland thing – with possible Native American and definite German origins, as well as regional adaptations and variations such as the Cincinnati specialty “Goetta,” featuring oats in lieu of cornmeal. Early recipes often featured buckwheat flour, and the selection of organs and meats used seems to vary to this day.
According to Weaver, the oldest datable recipe for American scrapple comes from Elizabeth Ellicott Lea, a Marylander (as the name makes clear) and Quaker who published her cookbook “Domestic Cookery” in 1845.
It is also stated that “the oldest scrapple maker still in business is Hemp’s in Jefferson Maryland,” founded in 1849.
Before that time, scrapple was made at home, often outdoors and in conjunction with sausage making.
“One [industrial era scrapple manufacturer] company does merit a mention, as it is a reminder that Baltimore is as much a scrapple town as Philadelphia. (Mencken disagrees – ed.) Henry Green Parks Jr. (1917-89), an African-American. began Parks Sausage Company in Baltimore in 1951. He converted an old dairy plant and soon put himself in open competition with firms like Rapa, which was essentially a Baltimore label. “More Parks sausages, Mom,” on radio advertisements is still remembered by many people today. The well-known Parks scrapple was the only Afircan-American brand to become a household word on a regional level.“ – Country Scrapple, William Woys Weaver
I’ve long held a defensiveness over the bad rep that Scrapple gets due to its name, and in the past I’ve jumped on the opportunity to serve it right. This however was my first time making it from scratch.
I started with a recipe for Scrapple from Mrs. J Morsell Roberts from “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland” but I also referenced a recipe from “Maryland’s Way,” the Hammond-Harwood House cookbook, and one from ”Chesapeake Bay Cooking“ by John Shields. His book is an excellent cookbook in itself but a valuable cross-reference for some of these minimal old recipes.
It’s lucky for us that Scrapple is so visually appealing because I haven’t found any good images for Mrs. or Mr. J Morsell Roberts.
The extent of my information is this:
Mr. J. Morsell Roberts died [1937 at] Calvert County Hospital.
Mr. Roberts was a member of an old Calvert county family, a son of the late Richard Roberts and Henrietta Morsell Roberts, and was very well known…. He was the husband of Mrs. Mollie Bond Roberts. – Calvert Gazette on mdhistory.net
I picked up a jowl at Lexington Market but I had to get the liver from a butcher shop. Perhaps I could have just gotten both at the latter and worked without the smoky jowl. I rinsed it, and the smoke flavor isn’t bad or overwhelming but it isn’t necessary.
Hog parts, Lexington Market
I also made my scrapple quite fatty. This was my first hog jowl experience. They are all fat. Weaver claims that the amount of fat included in scrapple increased over time due to various cultural factors. Mine may have taken it to new extremes. His book contains many recipes for scrapple. I intend to try some more this summer.
Lastly, my scrapple was a bit mushy. In a way, the mushiness ensured that it must be cooked properly, as it was impossible to flip until it had been well-crisped on one side.
There could be more to explore with scrapple in the future. Frankly, before reading Weavers book I had underestimated its very Maryland-ness. Any remnant of shame over this repulsive delight is purged from within me.
Recipe:
1 hog jowl
1 pork liver
salt
pepper, black
sage and/or other seasonings of choice
cornmeal
flour
Boil the jowl until the meat falls from the bone. (I did this in the slow cooker and added some onions I had to add flavor to the stock. Removed the onions later.) Save liquor it is boiled in. In a separate dish, soak the liver, changing water several times. Boil liver in separate water from jowl; throw this water away. Run all the meat through sausage cutter, then throw it in the reserved stock, season with salt, pepper, sage or other desired seasonings. Thicken with cornmeal the consistency of thin mush. Chill in a pan. To fry, heat a skillet with a very small amount of oil. Dredge slices in flour and fry until very crisp, turning once.
(Recipe Adapted from Eat, Drink and Be Merry in Maryland, Maryland’s Way, and Chesapeake Cooking with John Shields)
“Eat, Drink and Be Merry in Maryland” again. This bread pudding comes care of Mrs. William D. Poultney.
According to the Maryland Historical Society:
“The Poultney family were descendants of Ellen North, said to be the first Anglo-American child born in the area that is now Baltimore. Thomas Poultney, Sr. (1826-1887) was a writer under the name Rabbi Ben Tomi. He married Susan Carroll, daughter of Charles Carroll, and their children included Evan, Thomas Jr., and C. Carroll Poultney. Evan Poultney (d. 1940, age 86) was a founder and the first president of the old Baltimore Club, with an avid interest in amateur theatrics. While attending Harvard University (from which he graduated in 1875), he was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, and in Baltimore he supported the Paint and Powder Club.”
I had no idea what the Hasty Pudding Club was but apparently there WAS actual pudding involved. I’m not sure where William Poultney fits into that family but I’m sure that the love of pudding is in their blood.
Mr. Charles Parkhurst, director of the Baltimore Museum of art, chats with Mrs. William D. Poultney, a lender, and Mr. William C. Whitridge, a trustee of the museum, at preview of Maryland furniture of Queen Anne and Chippendale periods. (ebay)
Bread pudding comes in many forms in my household due to the leftover stale baguette segments or other bread leftover from sandwiches. Sweet bread pudding is more rare.
For this pudding I purchased some “rusks” at Punjab. I’ve always seen them there and wondered “what is the deal with ‘rusks’?” Well here is everything you want to know about rusks but didn’t care enough to ask: Rusks are a twice-baked bread or biscuits. Popular in India for dipping into tea. Rusks are not biscotti but biscotti are maybe rusks? Okay that’s enough.
I wasn’t sure quite how to follow this recipe. Should the whites be mixed in before pouring over the rusks? I don’t know. It turned out okay. I added additional lemon peel on the top which was kind of moronic because it browned in the oven and looked like little dirt pellets.
Pudding will come back to haunt Old Line Plate many times, especially when I undertake some campfire cooking. Pudding is an early American staple and longtime favorite of famously English origin.
For the wine sauce I cross-referenced my Southern Heritage cookbook library as well as a different recipe in EDBMiM and whipped something together. There is never any reason why I would have some extra red wine around my household. However, I was visiting a friend who was trying out this weird non-alcholic red wine recently. No one really liked it so I took it home knowing I would find some use for it in the kitchen. Voila.
The pudding was kind of dry so I kept pouring more milk on it whenever I’d heat up a serving.
Pudding of Split Rusks:
16 rusks
.25 Lb butter
.25 Lb almonds
6 eggs
sugar
lemon peel
Pour some boiling milk over sixteen split rusks, then add a quarter pound of butter, a quarter pound of almonds, six eggs, sugar and lemon peel, and lastly add the whites of the eggs beaten to a froth. Bake and serve it up with a wine sauce.
Wine sauce:
“One-quarter pound butter, six large tablespoonsful of brown sugar, one egg, one glass wine (or more). Beat butter and sugar to a cream, add egg and beat until light, put in wine gradually. Cook until thick and nearly boiling.Stir constantly.”
Community cookbooks are a mixed blessing for me.
On one hand they’re such a fantastic window into the kitchens of the more middle-class citizens as opposed to the fabulous lifestyles of “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland” or “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen.”
Flipping through the pages you can see changing trends, adventurous cooking and old family recipes, and pride and love expressed in (mostly) housewives feeding their family and friends.
The Park School Cook Book (1964), Art Work Miss Grace Van Order
Loyola Recipes(1974), sketches by Eileen F. Bolgiano
On the other hand there are HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of these books, churches and schools making slight updates, revising year after year and it’s a bit hard to keep up with or to fit into bookshelf and budget.
The first community cookbook was published during the Civil War. Yankee women determined to raise money for field hospitals organized themselves into what they called “Sanitation Commissions” and devised a way to make their domestic skills marketable: At a fair held in Philadelphia in 1864, they offered their own recipes under the title A Poetical Cook-Book…
After the war, women’s clubs organized cookbook projects to benefit widows, veterans and orphans. By 1915, as many as 6,000 community cookbooks had been published in the United States, and women were raising money to fund kindergartens and promote temperance and other political causes.
Magician in the Kitchen(1980), Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland. drawing: Mrs. David MacTaggart, Jr., Gibson Island
One of the oldest Maryland community cookbooks available on Google Books is “Tested Maryland Recipes,” compiled and published by the Ladies of the Presbyterian Church, Chesapeake City Maryland, that book contains assorted classics of Maryland cooking such as white potato pie as well as household advice such as tips “to keep ice.”
Tested Maryland Recipes
Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen is perhaps one of the more famous of Maryland Community Cookbooks. It was first published in 1962 by The Episcopal Church Women of St. Paul’s Parish in Queen Anne’s County. That book bears many Maryland ancestral names and an assortment of contemporary and family recipes as well as some nice illustrations.
Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen, Artwork: Stephanie Thompson, Sally Clark, Hallie Rugg
However, it takes an assortment of these types of cookbooks to compile a reasonable cross-section of Maryland food. In some school cookbooks we might find a more diverse array of names suggesting the ongoing immigrant contribution to Maryland menus.
Magician in the Kitchen(1980), Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland, Recipe Sketch Mrs. William G. Hill, Jr., Garden Club of Frederick
For the time being, I try to draw the line at buying books published after 1990. It’s a pretty arbitrary rule although it is likely that the proliferation of food blogs, cooking websites, and the internet recipe commentariat have chipped away at the vitality of a community cookbook in a typical household in that span of time. Meanwhile, thousands of community cookbooks continue to float around indefinitely, finding their way into the hands of historians and fanatics.
Black-Eyed Susan Country(1987), Published by the Saint Agnes Hospital Auxiliary, art James E. Toher, M.D.
Mrs. Jas S Hopper (Ella Griffith), editor of “Tested Maryland Recipes, Bethel Cemetry, Chesapeake City (findagrave.com)
