“Bad cooking is largely responsible for the conditions of our insane asylums, almshouses, prisons and hospitals. Bad cooking not only engenders disease, but is directly provocative of crime, while good cooking is the art of making home a paradise for the breadwinner.” – Sarah Tyson Rorer
I recently pulled the holiday ham-hock out of the freezer and sought out a split pea soup recipe. I found one to fit my ingredients in a mysterious 1908 Baltimore book simply entitled “The Church Cook Book.” Rather than a community cookbook, “The Church Cook Book” is anonymously compiled, with a preface giving credit to The Baltimore Sun, Harper’s Bazar, Miss Ellen L. Duff and Mrs. Sarah Tyson Rorer.
The latter two, I learned, were popular cooking instructors at the time.
As mentioned in the “New Year’s Cakes” entry, our friend Elizabeth Ellicott Lea was a student of one of America’s first cooking schools, led by Mrs. Elizabeth Goodfellow in the early 1800s. Lea was a fairly well-to-do woman who could afford the luxury of cooking instruction. According to a Goodfellow biography by Becky Libourel Diamond, cooking instruction had become much more affordable by the late 19th century.
“Whereas Goodfellow’s concentration was primarily teaching daughters of the wealthy to prepare dinner-party fare, Juliet Corson [of the New York Cooking School] conceived a system of graded levels within cooking schools, providing many more options for potential students of various backgrounds. In addition to the introduction of classes in plain cooking and those for the children of working people, this four-tiered approach also included instruction in fancy cookery.” – Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School by Becky Libourel Diamond
The Philadelphia Cooking School opened in 1878 with a similar ethos of making education available to women of different economic levels. One of that school’s first students was Sarah Tyson Rorer. Not long after completing the three-month curriculum the Philadelphia Cooking School, Rorer became the school’s principal. In 1883, she opened her own cooking school. A decade after that, she appeared at the 1893 World’s Fair. “She became a household name,” wrote Diamond, “and traveled throughout the country to personally demonstrate cooking techniques to one packed auditorium after another.”
Thrift had been a popular theme with Juliet Corson, who penned a pamphlet entitled “Fifteen-Cent Dinners for Workingmen’s Families” and distributed it for free. Rorer continued the tradition of instruction on food budgeting, but her passion was nutrition. Her cooking school taught contemporary science on carbohydrates, protein, and sugars. Hospitals consulted her for advice on menus for the infirm. In her demonstrations, she declared that dessert was “unhealthy”, “unnecessary”, and even “deadly” before making a show of reluctantly demonstrating dishes such as Charlotte Russe with Chocolate Sauce, and admonishing the audience not to recreate such dishes at home. She took to heart an English physician’s condemnation of white bread as “the staff of death,” and with her own flair for the dramatic, she appropriated the saying.
“In the cooking school we do not especially teach elaborate or highly seasoned dishes; the latter we always guard against. The true principles of economy are taught; together with the proper combinations of foods. In fact, we try to teach what to eat and how to cook it.” – Sarah Tyson Rorer
The first cooking school in Baltimore (and possibly all of Maryland) opened in 1885 as an arm of the nursery and children’s hospital on Carrolton and Mulberry Streets. According to the Sun, “the lady managers will… endeavor by their personal influence to make the art of cooking honorable and fashionable.” The first class was taught by Juliet Corson from the New York cooking school.
Although some schools accepted Black servants, whose education was generally paid by the employer, it wasn’t long before Baltimore’s Black citizens organized their own school out of the YWCA on Park Avenue & Franklin Street in 1896. There the schoolwork included “moral and religious training,” housekeeping, and sewing. Beyond self-improvement and employment opportunities, it was implied that these skills offered an increased level of independence. It was emphasized that girls would be taught to make their own dresses in a twelve-course series of intensive lessons.
Baltimore Sun, 1897
In December 1897, Sarah Tyson Rorer came to Baltimore to lecture at the “Santa Claus Food Show,” and espoused her prescient admonition that frying pans were a scourge upon the public health. She provided demonstrarions on salads, fish, and bread. She closed her lecture series with advice on feeding a family on ten cents a day. That’s roughly three 2017 dollars. Despite the lesson on thrift, she admonished against the eating of organ meats, deeming it dangerous. To back up her claim, she declared that she had inspected a calf’s liver under a microscope and found “the presence of small tumors, of which she counted over thirty.”
My split pea soup recipe didn’t quite turn out as I anticipated, but maybe I just need instruction on how to make it. I assumed that you do NOT drain the water and I ended up with watery soup and needed to add twice as many peas. After that it was alright. Maybe it’s supposed to be watery to save money?
I do believe it provided enough nutriment to keep me out of the insane asylum, at least for now.
Recipe:
- .5 Cup split peas
- 1 Quart cold water
- .5 small onion
- 2 Tablespoon butter
- 1 Tablespoon flour
- 1 Teaspoon salt
- black pepper
- 1 to 2 Cups hot milk
Pick over and wash the peas. Soak 8 to 12 hours or over night in cold water. Drain off the water and cook peas and onion in 1 quart of water until soft. Press through a strainer, and add butter and flour cooked together. Add seasoning, and thin with hot water or milk, and reheat. Peas will not soften in salted water, so salt should not be added until they are cooked. A small piece of fat salt pork or a ham-bone may be cooked with the peas, and if so, the butter may be omitted. Lentil soup may be made as directed for split pea soup.
Recipe from “The Church Cook Book,” 1908
I saved the sources for the end…
Baltimore Sun:
- “A Cooking School to be Established” 1/23/1884
- “BANISH FRYING PANS: Advice Given In A Lecture On Cooking By Mrs. Rorer, Of Philadelphia” 12/16/1897
- “HE DIDN’T LIKE MRS. RORER” 12/21/1897
Afro-American:
- “Y. W. C. A.” 2/22/1896
- “ABOUT THE CITY.: Cooking School To Open.” 10/05/1901
“Sarah Tyson Rorer: The Nation’s Instructress in Dietetics and Cookery,” Emma Weigley, 1977
“Mrs. Goodfellow: The Story of America’s First Cooking School” Becky Diamond 2012