Sugar-Top Apple Cake, Lucretia Harris
Lucretia Harris’s cooking career started dramatically: with Thanksgiving dinner.
Harris didn’t tell interviewer Kelly Feltault exactly how she ended up in a trial-by-fire Thanksgiving meal prep for her employer, Mrs. George Brown, only that she “got flying colors.” Harris killed a turkey according to customs she’d learned in her Princess Anne farming community, and she turned to a copy of Fanny Farmer’s Boston School Cook Book for the rest.
Harris was 93 when she gave the oral history, held in the collection of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, so she can be forgiven if some of the dishes she recalled cooking over 50 years before don’t actually appear in Farmer’s book. Aside from the turkey, she mentioned coleslaw, cranberry sauce, hot rolls, hominy, and Minnehaha Cake.
Whatever she cooked that Thanksgiving, a legend had begun.
When “Miss Brown” (Anna Ball Brown 1884-1959) was left widowed and no longer needed Lucretia’s services, Lucretia worked in the kitchen of the historic Washington Hotel in Princess Anne, followed by Salisbury restaurant Johnny’s and Sammy’s, which is still remembered by some residents today.
Lucretia Harris’ cooking may be part of why. An ad for Johnny’s and Sammy’s from 1947 mentioned “hot rolls,” one of Harris’ specialties.
She was born Lucretia Holbrook in 1908, one of thirteen siblings who grew up picking tomatoes, beans, and corn on the Howard Anderson Farm. In the 40s, she married William Harris. In her oral history, Lucretia mentions that William was blind for 12 years and had aneurysms of the brain. Though the 1950 census listed William as a farm laborer, and his 1982 obituary mentioned landscaping and masonry, Lucretia’s work must have been vital to the family’s sustenance as they raised their nephew Carl as a son.
Whatever her circumstances, there can be no doubt that Lucretia Harris found meaning in cooking.
In 1982, she was given a plaque declaring her to be the “World’s Greatest Oyster Fryer” by the Somerset County Soybean Growers. She had retired by that point. She told the Salisbury Daily Times about her stints cooking in a hotel in Atlantic City and for a family in Washington, DC. “I prefer living here,” she said of Princess Anne.
Lucretia told the Times that even when she accepted the odd catering job for organizations like the Soybean Growers, she didn’t eat the food she prepared. “I’ll have just enough to see that the food is right,” she said, “but I always eat at home.” She deemed her fried chicken to be her own favorite dish to eat, but expressed her love of pastry baking. “Her diners enjoy her sticky buns best,” the paper declared — it wasn’t the last time the sticky buns would be mentioned.
In 2002, 93-year-old Lucretia was featured in a large article in the Style section of the Daily Times. The owner of Washington Hotel, Mary Murphey, was quoted as saying, “she is one of the best cooks who ever walked.” When Lucretia worked for the hotel, Murphey recalled, “every day at lunch she made 90 rolls, seven pies, a bread pudding or rice custard, and apple dumplings. By 2 p.m., there wouldn’t be a roll or piece of dessert left in the place.”
That article gave Lucretia various nicknames: “The Pie Lady,” “Miss Lu,” and “St. Lucretia,” the patron saint of cooking.
“I lo-o-o-ve to cook raccoon,” Harris told the paper, describing the process of slow roasting the meat with onions, sage, pepper, and plenty of fat. She drew the line at frog legs, having herself cooked them but recalling frogs on the farm of her childhood: Knowing the frogs that I seen through Mount Vernon jumping, I couldn’t enjoy em.”
“The Pie Lady” actually credited her onetime employer Anna Brown with teaching her how to bake pies, cakes, and rolls. She’d once made Maryland Beaten Biscuits alongside Brown’s daughter Leonora Pierce. They practically broke the legs off the table beating air into the biscuits. Of the results, Harris said, “I love em but I’m not goin to fool my time away making em anymore.” She told the Times the secret to her success and legend: “I love to cook.”
Retirement didn’t mean rest for Harris. In 2003, the Times interviewed her again, not only about food but about her work sewing crafts and garments for newborns at a local hospital.
In that interview, Harris opined: “Parents are not teaching children how to live a full life. That includes teaching them everything about food — from the field to the table.” The article also mentioned her sticky buns, of course.
As did another in 2005. Harris had moved into Manokin Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center where she quickly joined a cooking club and demonstrated her sticky buns. She seemed wistful for her working days, which had ended due to back and leg weakness. But she remained optimistic as always. “I’ll tell you one thing,” she told reporter Liz Holland, “I had a beautiful life.”
How lucky are we that that life included teaching others and leaving behind recipes? One of Harris’ 2008 obituaries said “unlike many cooks who held the secrets of their creations out of sight, Harris was happy to share.”
She shared ten recipes with the famous and beloved 1983 “What is Cooking on Party Line” cookbook. While sticky buns are not among those recipes, she did share a recipe for cheese biscuits— the same recipe she shared and made when doing the 2001 oral history interview.
I’ve been wanting to write about Lucretia Harris for so long that I built it up into an event. I wanted to host a dinner and make those biscuits, and “coin carrot salad,” pumpkin cake, squash casserole, and “Spring Imperial Rockfish.” I never got around to it.
And then a few weeks ago, I bought these apples. Fresh from the farmers’ market Staymans. As I looked through my many Apple Cake recipes, I noticed that unlike with her other nine recipes, Harris included a whole paragraph above this one:
“It’s a big, beautiful cake with a sugar-crisp top that shatters at the touch of the knife. Inside it is rich with chopped apples and walnuts, fragrant with spices. Well worth the effort involved in the making, it’s a cake to remember when you are expecting a crowd or baking for a bazaar. The apples keep it moist and fresh for days, in case any is left to store away for a future occasion.”
If none other than Lucretia Harris felt a need to write such a gushing description about a cake, I was going to make it.
The cake is excellent. I made it a second time. To get more mileage out of the “sugar-crisp top,” I tried a technique where you grease a pan and then sprinkle it with sugar rather than flour. This was well worth doing.
I frequently see engagement-bait videos about historic cooks. Usually, they will say that this person invented this dish or they were the first to do that technique. It makes me feel like someone has to have been forgotten in order to be remembered. They have to have been the first, the originator, the one-and-only.
I’m more interested in people like Lucretia Harris. Is she forgotten? I have a feeling anyone who bought her sticky buns at the farmer’s market would say “no.” And she had citations and awards from the NAACP, Governors Schafer and O’Malley, Maryland House of Delegates, and more.
Throughout the oral history interview, Harris deflected questions referring directly to her culinary supremacy. When asked, “why are you famous for your cheese biscuits?” she simply replied, “I really can’t say, but I just… make them up.” But when the interviewer read an article calling Harris “”Somerset’s Best”, a woman who “loves to cook, and people love to eat her meals,” Harris simply replied “uh-huh.” In 2005 she told the Daily Times “you don’t let yourself think you are the greatest; you let other people tell how you’re doing.” And people did.
She’s not known for having invented a new dish or pioneered any kitchen revolution that we know of. I think Lucretia Harris did something more inspiring, because we can all strive towards it. She is remembered for being absolutely excellent at what she did, because she loved it and pursued it with all her heart. She freely shared expertise and recipes, and so her traditions will live on.
Recipe:
- 1 Cup butter
- 2 Cups sugar
- 3 eggs
- 3 Cup sifted all-purpose flour
- 1.5 Teaspoons baking soda
- .5 Teaspoon salt
- 1 Teaspoon cinnamon
- .25 Teaspoon mace
- 2 Teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 Cup chopped apple
- 2 Cup chopped walnut
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix and sift flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and mace; add gradually. Stir in vanilla, apples and walnuts. Batter will be stiff. Spoon into greased and floured [note: I enjoyed this technique-Kara] 10 inch tube pan. Bake at 325° for 1 1/2 hours. Let cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove to rack.
Recipe from What Is Cooking On Party Line. Bill Phillips. Broad Creek Printing. 1983.
