The “Purviance Family Papers” at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library contain a near syllabus of early U.S. History: “Revolutionary War activities”, “Civil War veterans’ activities”, “U.S. relations with Napoleon.” They also contain some of the oldest Maryland cooking manuscripts – two small books filled with handwritten recipes, remedies (my favorite is the “Cure For Weak And Weeping Eyes”), and some agricultural ‘lifehacks’ pasted into the covers.
E. [Elizabeth Isabella] Purviance recipe book, Purviance Family Papers, 1757-1932, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University
One of the most vivid descriptions of the joys of foraging for wild food was written by Edna Lewis in “In Pursuit of Flavor,” the 1988 follow-up to her influential book “The Taste of Country Cooking.” She wrote in the present tense about the tastes from her childhood in Freetown, Virginia, where both cultivated and wild land offered sensory delight:
“Beyond the garden is the orchard… and beyond the orchard are the fields and woods, where wild things grow – watercress, mushrooms, strawberries, blackberries, grapes, and nuts. Perhaps it is because of the natural, undisturbed compost that nurtures them year after year, or perhaps it is because they grow only where the soil, light and humidity are right for them, but wild things never fail us. They always taste good, which is why if you see only a handful of wild nuts or a cupful of berries, you should pick them. They have a flavor nothing else has. If you transplant a wild plant to the garden it will never taste the same.”
The impact of having been raised in an environment that was both psychologically and physically nurturing stayed with Lewis. As one of the first evangelists of the value of farm-to-table food, Lewis’ relationship to food defined a philosophy for a faction of chefs, diners and home cooks who have sought to question the wisdom of the industrial agriculture era.
To many people, the question of whether an urban environment can incorporate the kind of nurturing qualities found in a rural farming community doesn’t seem worth asking. Cities have been notoriously depleted and toxified by centuries of industry. In Baltimore, the very walls and pipes have poisoned generations of children. For many, urban environments are not only not nurturing – they are hostile.
Nonetheless, a growing number of public health and municipal planning professionals have taken notice of the foragers who do venture into city parks, highway medians or grassy lots to gather edible plants and fungus that most people don’t even know are there.
Baltimore is sometimes pulled into these conversations by chance. The Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is located here, and naturally their initial research often gathers data locally.
In December 2017, they released the findings of a study done in a partnership with the US Forest Service. “Researchers surveyed 105 foragers in Baltimore to get data on: forager demographics; commonly-foraged foods; the locations of foraging activities; motivations for and barriers to foraging; and the contribution of foraged materials to foragers’ diets.”
I was one of the participants of this study. The results have given context beyond the anecdotal about who else is “out there,” gathering in Baltimore, what they are gathering, and why. Most, like me, are white women in their mid-thirties. Most have a college degree and earn 20-40k in annual income. The average years of foraging experience is less than five. Foragers reported gathering “a diverse array of plant and fungal materials which, in some cases, constituted an important fraction of an individual’s overall diet. Despite this,” the report notes, “foraging remains largely unrecognized in urban policy, planning, and design, except where prohibited by regulations governing public parks and other green spaces.”
Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: the book that started my foraging fascination
Researching the history of foraging is an exercise in futility. Where a behavior was once a normal part of survival, it’s not worth writing too much about in books or newspapers. The term “gathering” was more commonly used until the last few decades. What is easier to find is the *decline* of foraging. Old newspapers would occasionally mention unfortunate people who picked the wrong mushroom, but there were no forceful admonitions. In 1894 the Baltimore Sun reported that edible mushrooms were growing abundantly that September but that “it requires an experienced person to distinguish them from the poisonous toadstools.”
Nearly a century later, in 1958, the Hagerstown Daily Mail printed a column by a Dr. Van Dallen entitled “How to Keep Well.” His first advice on how to keep well? “Don’t gather mushrooms…. Even the experts have been known to make mistakes,” the doctor wrote.
It would seem that the popularity of foraging waned until its resurgence in the 1990s, but it never fully went away.
In 1998, one of the first ever studies of urban foraging was conducted right in Baltimore by the now-defunct Community Resources, Inc, “a nonprofit organization promoting community stewardship to restore our urban environment.”
The results are fascinating. Forester Paul Jahnige observed a diverse array of people collecting edible and medicinal items in the city parks. With Community Resources, he produced a paper filled with stories from actual foragers, including elderly African Americans who gathered poke greens, children shaking mulberries from city trees, and a Korean family who would make an annual trip to gather Chinese Chestnuts before cooking them at home, together. The paper determined that “urban forest product collectors come from a wide diversity of socio-economic, age, gender, and ethnic groups and institutions.”
They also determined that the needs and interest of these foragers was not considered before park planning decisions were made. The paper cites the proposed removal of the Chinese Chestnut trees for road-widening. While neighborhood residents, traffic engineers and park officials held many meetings about the project, “the collectors of these nuts were not even considered. They had no voice in the decision. Their use of the trees did not count.”
A lot has changed in the intervening years. Eric Kelly of Charm City Farms feels that Baltimore is doing more and more to encourage foraging and urban agriculture. “I think that they are [encouraging foraging] to a certain extent.” He cites Baltimore Housing’s Adopt-A-Lot program as one example. “You can get involved with Tree Baltimore, Parks and People and other non-profits [focused on] green space, and become part of that community and get involved with maintenance. They are open to conversations about how the areas are tended to.”
Charm City Farms conducts workshops on foraging itself as well as follow-up processes like making rope and processing acorns. At their farm and work-shed in Johntson Square, the concepts of urban versus rural sometimes collide in amusing and enlightening ways. Local teenagers stop by to marvel at the slabs of deer meat and discards, while survivalists-in-training from the suburbs make a show of nonchalance.
Starting friction fires and making your own ropes and acorn flour may be useful skills to have, but even Kelly doesn’t believe that foraging can truly provide enough food to live on. “It can round out a diet pretty well, and I wouldn’t expect to go out and get a full meal but what you’re going to get at a grocery store will never come close to the freshness and goodness of foraged foods.”
Nutrition may not be the most beneficial aspect of urban foraging at any rate. The family ties and connections to traditions first mentioned in Jahnige’s survey are a theme in subsequent studies, including the most recent one completed by The Center for a Livable Future. A 2013 study in Seattle asserted that “urban foraging maintains traditions and social ties while deepening connections with nature.”
Increasingly, municipalities are considering the benefit in allowing and even fostering these activities. The Seattle study conclusion stated that “seeking wild foods and medicines in the city can be seen as a way in which foragers assert their rights to the natural resources that support their wild food and health practices.”
Delving into issues of planning (or any issues, really) in Baltimore is particularly fraught. Any discussion is remiss without consideration of the racial inequality that is built into the very layout of the city. As (some of) Baltimore’s citizens and media have become increasingly interested in understanding this fact, professor Lawrence Brown has become a de-facto interpreter. His analysis of the segregation and the resources allocated to “The White L and the Black Butterfly” elevated the discussion in the wake of the 2015 unrest. I reached out to him to inquire whether seemingly trivial subjects like urban foraging have a place in the reparations of Baltimore’s segregationist culture and policies.
“Urban planning around increasing resources is always worthwhile for Black Butterfly neighborhoods. Baltimore Apartheid operates on a basis of segrenomics that Noliwe Rooks defines as ‘the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation’ (from her book Cutting School) intentionally reduces access to resources and allows White neighborhoods to hoard them,” Brown says. “Certain environmental efforts may not be a priority in many Black Butterfly neighborhoods… where people are struggling to survive day-by-day. But they are worthwhile. The efforts to plant a garden or fruit trees should not be isolated or a one off project. They should be connected with pressing issues like providing employment or safe spaces or teaching children or reducing redlining.”
One study has pointed out, for instance, that access to park land in Baltimore is inequitable by race and income. Another obvious concern would be environmental contaminants, which often tend to make their way into the lands that disadvantaged people live and depend on, whether legally, by corrupt corporations, or just plain lack of sanitation services.
The Center for a Livable Future is planning to follow-up with further study of contamination concerns. Study co-author Keeve Nachman says “we needed to get an understanding of what foraged items people were most likely to consume and where they are getting them, since both of these are essential to know in order to try and make sense of whether exposures to these contaminants are of concern. It’s somewhat inevitable that exposures to contaminants are going to happen in the urban environment – the real question is whether or not the levels and timing of these exposures are concerning. Now that we know quite a bit about foraging patterns in Baltimore, further work will allow us to answer this question with a lot more confidence.”
As a lifelong forager in suburban and rural environments, the thought of toxins has passed my mind. As much as I love a good morel hunt, my favorite foraging memories involve gathering blackberries with my grandmother as the cars rushed by us on the highway. I wondered if I should worry about car exhaust, but the taste of a fresh ripe blackberry beat out my concerns.
As for foraging in the city, I once didn’t consider it an option. Then, in the mid-2000’s, I had a coworker, Aliza Sollins, who would come into our office in Bolton Hill with a bag full of edible items found in the nearby alleyways or overgrown hedges. Aliza’s connection with food systems eventually led her to a career gardening work with refugees and Baltimore children, tackling issues of education and food access. She is currently working at the community organization Annie E. Casey Foundation. She says “Foraging helps me to reconnect the idea of food as nature. It’s different than gardening because while gardening is something that humans must control and maintain, foraging something growing wild or that has gone feral… gives the sense that nature is enduring and abundant. …. foraging is definitely a nice starting point of intersection between connecting people to the plants around them. People tend to be more interested in a plant if it can be of value to them in some way.”
Aliza told me she always felt appeal in possessing the knowledge and ability to forage for food, but echoed Kelly’s opinion that urban foraging is impractical as a large component of anyone’s diet: “Foraging is also not a good way to ACTUALLY survive unless you have a lot of land because it’s so hard to get enough calories from random plants, it more about the idea of survival…a sense of resilience.”
Adopt-A-Lot aside, Baltimore doesn’t tend to be very cutting edge about these types of things. That is part of the reason that this study’s Baltimore focus is exciting.
Inquiring about the intersections of the food waste and foraging studies presents some questions of interpretation. Nachman says, “On one hand, we could consider that all unforaged forageables in the urban environment are a form of wasted food… many of them are nutrient dense and pack a real punch when it comes to supplementing the diet. Thankfully, the environmental and public health consequences of wasting food in this context are negligible, as the inputs to production are virtually nonexistent (since many of these items are typically considered weeds). On the other hand, we have learned that there are very real concerns related to over-foraging; for example, with some species, there is a potential for harvesting to occur to such an extent that the plants won’t grow back, which have obvious negative consequences on food availability.”
Eric Kelly from Charm City Farms feels that “in [city] limits its especially beneficial to encourage foraging because we’re not disturbing a habitat or ecosystem… not one that’s not already ruined anyway… whereas parks in the county are very sensitive towards that kind of thing.”
The interchange between humans and plants in the city creates intriguing possibilities.
If you’re hiking through Leakin Park during a leafy time of year, there are moments you could forget you’re in the city. Franklintown Road winds around the south end of the park, largely quiet. The streams, ruins and recreational structures create intrigue scattered throughout the park. This remote feeling has enabled the conditions for Leakin Park’s notorious reputation. Longtime residents in the surrounding neighborhoods know the stories of the discarded bodies found in the park dating back to the 1940′s. Those stories were amplified by the Serial Podcast; now, people who couldn’t have named a Baltimore park make jokes about ‘the bodies.’
While outsiders and naysayers crack jokes, many citizens find respite within the city’s green spaces, reaping physical and mental health benefits in the process. Could foraging help repair the relationship Baltimore citizens have with this park?
Heide Grundmann from Friends of Leakin Park is aware of foraging activities in the park, but the park stewards are cautious to condone it. “in general the park system does not allow taking things from the park, excepting fallen acorns and similar fallen fruits. Over the years we have observed significant loss of habitat and wildlife due to climate change and overpopulation of deer, who eat young plants and undergrowth. It takes a well-informed person to forage carefully without causing detrimental effects on the area. During the October Mushroom Festival guided walks occur to teach mushroom identification.”
The CLF study may enable Baltimore to strike a balance. Marla Emery, the US Forestry Service researcher who collaborated on the study believes that it’s possible and worth pursuing. “As a scientist, in general, and a federal scientist in particular, it’s my job to provide information that will support land managers in making those sorts of decisions. Current strategies for managing hunting and fishing definitely provide potential models. In the not-too-distant future, we hope to convene a group of urban public land managers, non-governmental organizations, foragers, and researchers to review the state-of-the-knowledge about urban foraging and consider whether there might be a pathway to safe, sustainable foraging in parks and other city green spaces.”
Many ‘urban foragers,’ myself included, feel that foraging can have benefits beyond the free food. Increasingly, the studies seem to confirm this feeling.
Aliza puts it best:
“Foraging helps me feel more connected to the city because it helps you connect to secret, special spots (like the herbs growing at the base of the statue in Mt. Royal!). It makes you value public space. It’s funny because when I was in Kentucky, you would think that there is so much land to access there, but really most of the land is other people’s property unless you go to a big state park. I realized that Baltimore is so special because there are so many shared small public spaces. The city’s vacant lot adoption program is really special.
Staying connected to nature as the source of food is really powerful, and also helps to maintain honor for our bodies and the earth.”
“Dozens of AFRO readers… have kept the AFRO switchboard busy since last week’s edition published a recipe for cornbread made by Mrs. Ronald [Fanniejoe] Reid of 1306 W. Lanvale St.” – Afro-American, February 4, 1956
After The Afro-American printed Harlem Park resident Fanniejoe Reid’s cornbread recipe in January 1956, the recipe kind of went ‘viral.’
One anonymous reader wrote in to inquire about employing Mrs. Reid. “Mrs. Norma Gladden of 816 N. Calhoun St., who admitted being proud of her ‘southern cooking,’ said she had never tasted so delicious a cornbread,” wrote the Afro-American in the follow-up article. “Mrs. Estelle Owens of 3213 Piedmont Ave. said that the recipe was the chief subject of conversation at the meeting of her lodge on Wednesday night.”
The Afro-American, 1956
Reid was a trained chef who was also “a regular attendant at AFRO cooking schools.” She’d worked at a hotel in Ocean City, at Baltimore public schools, as well as taking on occasional private catering jobs. After 1956 she became known as “the cornbread lady” to readers of the Afro-American.
Reid was born Fanniejoe Nixon in Baltimore on February 15, 1912. Both of her parents, Voyd and Louis Nixon, were born in Maryland, and their parents before them. The family lived on the 700 block of Caroline Street along with Voyd’s mother and several extended family members.
Although the 1930 census lists Fanniejoe’s job as waitress in a tea room, she was also trained as a beautician and established a salon at Lafayette and Gilmor. This is presumably how she met her husband, a beauty supply salesman. Ronald C. Reid was born in Jamaica in 1906 and came to Baltimore as a child. He’d been a waiter at the famous Hotel Rennert before getting into beauty products sales. After the two married in 1930, she turned the operation of the salon over to him and she once again focused on cooking.
Fanniejoe & Ronald Reid in the Afro-American, 1935
In the 1940 census, the Reids are shown residing at 1532 Harlem Avenue with seven of Fanniejoe’s family members, plus two lodgers. These type of living situations were very common in Baltimore, where the restrictive segregated housing rules provided limited areas for even middle-class, well-connected Black citizens to live.
The immediate and robust reaction to Fanniejoe Reid’s cornbread recipe gives interesting insight into the relationship between the (primarily female) readership and these type of recipe columns (or at least those in the Afro-American). Readers tried the cornbread within a week of the article’s printing. They reached out to the paper to respond, and to Fanniejoe at home on the telephone. “I can’t get away from the phone long enough to do my meals,” she told the Afro-American.
Following the lively response to the cornbread recipe, Fanniejoe Reid was given her own column in the paper, entitled “Cooking Is Fun.” Over the next four years she regularly shared advice on cooking and hosting. She told readers “how to put appeal in Lenten Menus” with baked salmon and oyster omelets. Reid asserted that despite the French reputation for ragout “there are some delightful stews that have come down through our American mothers.” She shared recipes for everything from peach cakes to salads, sweet potato pone, corn dumplings, “sumptuous sandwiches,” and Cointreau chiffon pie. When readers requested recipes, she was always ready to oblige.
Reid with schoolchildren, Afro-American, 1956
“Cooking should never be a utilitarian thing,” she wrote. “You should get fun out of the hours you spend in your kitchen.” Still, she often dispensed shortcuts for those who didn’t share in her enthusiasm for the culinary arts.
It appears that the “Cooking is Fun” column was turned over to a Betsy Patterson in April of 1960. Fanniejoe’s final column shared some hot breads, tips for scrambled eggs and muffins, and a recipe for “Glazed Pineapple Fingers,” a pineapple scone with icing. No fond farewell to readers.
Fanniejoe Reid passed away in 1973, and Ronald in 1998. Her legacy in the Afro-American women’s pages remains enshrined in the archives, and in the food of any family who ever saved a recipe from “the cornbread lady.”
Recipe:
Notes:
About 30 minutes will do it. I’ve made Fanniejoe Reid’s cornbread a couple of times. It may go without saying, but in addition to “the mixing,” the cornmeal makes a huge difference! My favorite so far has been this Hodgson Mills stuff which has a natural but not overbearing sweetness and a nice… “tooth” or whatever. Fanniejoe says its fine to leave out the sugar or adjust the salt because “a good cook always aims towards pleasing the tastes of the ones she is cooking for.”
If there were definitive proof that fudge was invented in Baltimore, we’d never hear the end of it. Tourists would be encouraged to eat fudge-dipped crabcakes or whatever, and all the billboards in the city would be like “Sprint is the favorite network of fudge-lovers!”
Nevertheless, there is some intriguing evidence that ties the origins of fudge to the city. This was complete news to me when I recently checked out Stella Parks’ “Bravetart: Iconic American Desserts.” I was barely home from the library before I was contacting Atomic Books to order a copy of my own.
The cookbook contains a lot of historical background essays similar to some on this blog – but unlike Old Line Plate, “Bravetart” contains recipes that are actually useful. Aside from assuaging some of my dessert hang-ups (Hint: I grew up near the Hostess outlet), I found a lot of information that will help improve my baking, and this blog by extension. What put it over the top for me though was the quality of the research. I actually gasped aloud when I read Parks’ conclusion about the origins of the Oreo brand name.
One of the recipes in the book is for “Baltimore Fudge.” After years of researching Maryland food, it’s always exciting to find new things I was completely unaware of.
A 1995 piece in the Los Angeles times by Baltimore-born writer Steven Raichlen disseminated the Baltimore origins of fudge as reported by food historian John Mariani in the “Dictionary of American Food and Drink.” “When it comes to fudge,” Raichlen wrote, “Baltimore isn’t a bad place to come from.” Of course, the Sun reprinted that article so that readers could bask in this comforting fact.
The prevailing fudge origin story centers around a Vassar student, Emelyn Hartridge, who popularized the confection on campus; it then spread to other schools. Fudge-making remained associated with women’s colleges for decades. Hartridge, it turns out, is said to have gotten the recipe from a schoolmate’s cousin in Baltimore. (That’s how recipes go, especially sweet ones.)
Harrisburg Pennsylvania Daily Independent, 1903
By 1903, recipes appeared in regional newspapers for “Baltimore Fudge.” The women’s magazine The Delineator in 1907 referred to “…Baltimore caramels, a confection afterwards known as ‘January Thaw’ and now called ‘fudge.’” The “January Thaw” term is a little hard to search, but it doesn’t seem to have been as prevalent in old newspapers and cookbooks as “Baltimore Fudge” or “Baltimore Caramels.” When I surveyed other 19th-century recipes, it appeared that the major difference between the “Baltimore” chocolate caramels and others was that the Baltimore recipes usually don’t contain molasses.
Chocolate was primarily consumed in beverage form in the early days of the United States, and was most popular as a breakfast. The chocolate caramels that became popular in the mid-1800s required better control of heat. I won’t get on too much of a chocolate tangent but needless to say, there was a lot going on.
Candy and confection caught on more as the price of sugar went down and the quality of cooking technology improved. Its been written that 19th-century Baltimoreans tended to eat a lot outside of the home. Sweets like fudge could be had right alongside oysters in busy downtown markets.
Baltimore Sun, 1877
Confection recipes appeared in trade magazines for hotels and the like, but confectioners also had their own trade magazines. Books like “The confectioners’ hand-book,” printed in London in 1883, offer up fascinating detail of the processes involved in 19th-century candy-making.
An 1865 book, “The Art of Confectionery,” suggested that candy making was becoming an exciting pastime for housewives:
“While the preparation of soups, joints, and gravies, is left to ruder and stronger hands, the delicate fingers of the ladies of a household are best fitted to mingle the proportions of exquisite desserts… It is absolutely necessary to the economy of the household that this art should form a part of every lady’s education. This fact is becoming generally acknowledged, and the composition of delicate confections is passing from the hands of unskilled domestics into the business and amusement of the mistress of the household.”
I definitely have rude and unskilled hands but I gave it my best.
In “Iconic American Desserts,” Parks referenced the ‘caramels’ recipe found in the “The Favorite Receipt Book and Business Directory,” an anonymous advertising cookbook printed by a ladies’ church group in Baltimore in 1884. I was able to trace that recipe back to the 2nd published Maryland cookbook “Queen of the Kitchen,” by Mrs. M.L. Tyson in 1870.
The first Maryland cookbook (1859) was by killjoy Elizabeth Ellicott Lea who was not likely to promote frivolous treats like chocolate caramels. Her only chocolate recipe is for a drinking chocolate “for the sick.” You had to be sick to get chocolate or liquor in the Lea household.
After appearing in “Queen of the Kitchen,” the chocolate caramels recipe was subsequently printed in the classic “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen,” by Mrs. B. C. Howard in 1873. Mrs. Charles H. Gibson also included it in her 1894 “Maryland and Virginia Cook Book.” In fact, that book includes SEVEN slight variations on the recipe. This made me decide that Mrs. Gibson is kind of irritating.
In the Los Angeles Times, Raichlen shared a fudge recipe from his grandmother. Although the ingredients are essentially the same, the order of operations involves dissolving the sugar before stirring in the chocolate. This recipe was reprinted in the Baltimore Sun Recipe Finder, where a reader described it as having “a smooth texture with a slight crust on the outside.” This is basically how my own fudge turned out, despite putting all the ingredients straight into the pan.
Stella Parks’ book has an updated Baltimore Fudge recipe which includes some white sugar to decrease the bitterness, as well as far more precise instructions and tips than found in the old Maryland cookbooks. In the years I’ve been doing this blog, I’ve actually grown disillusioned with famous chefs and cookbooks, but I endorse “Iconic American Desserts,”… that is, unless you work for Visit Baltimore in which case… move right along, nothing to see here.
Recipe:
1.5 Lb brown sugar
.25 Lb chocolate
1 teacup cream
.25 Lb butter
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
“Mix together and boil twenty-five minutes; stir in one tablespoonful vanilla juice before pouring out to cool.“
Recipe from “The Favorite Receipt Book and Business Directory,” Church of the Holy Comforter (Baltimore, Md.). Ladies Aid Society, 1884
“And so we are really going to have a tea room after all; it is to be a perfect love of a place, all little blue and white China teacups, and walls papered in cunning blue figures, and the name of this delicate place of amusement is going to be the ‘Dutch Tea Room.’ If you have happened to go to Baltimore, or visit Baltimore, or have friends who have, why you know all about the little tea room there that has the same name and has – been run by society girls for the past several years.” – The Times Dispatch, Richmond, VA, 1912
In 1907, Harriet Stanton Blatch met her friend Hettie Wright Graham for dinner. The destination was the famous Hoffman House hotel in New York. The “palace hotel” was known for fine food, expensive artwork, celebrity guests, and rye whiskey. Blatch and Graham took the elevator up to the fashionable rooftop garden dining area but were denied a table. The owner told Blatch that women diners were not allowed without a male escort. The policy was meant to protect women such as Blatch and Graham from having to dine near “objectionable” women. “When I have been annoyed it has been by men,” Blatch remarked. “I do not suppose you make any effort to keep objectionable men out.” She attempted to sue the hotel, and lost.
In the decades after the Civil War, a glamorous new era of restaurant dining was emerging. It wasn’t considered respectable for women to dine without male accompaniment in these places.
Clothing sale in the Dutch Tea Room, 1913
At the same time, women were spending more time outside of the home, whether it was working, shopping, or socializing. In “Ten Restaurants That Changed America”, author Paul Freedman wrote that “the period from 1890 to 1910 saw the proliferation of many types of middle-class restaurants, ranging from those featuring Chinese and other foreign cuisines to tearooms, coffee shops, cafeterias, and other inexpensive but orderly places to have lunch. These were not necessarily intended exclusively for women, but the fact that they did not serve alcohol made them seem appropriate places for unaccompanied women to dine.” (Note: Some accounts claim that it wasn’t always tea in those ladies’ teapots!) These types of establishments offered up “decorous but economical refuge, a midday oasis of sorts, where women who were shopping could dine and recuperate, or where women who worked in offices or stores could have a tranquil if more hurried lunch.”
A 1904 article in The Carlisle Pennsylvania Sentinal advised that opening a tea room was “a profitable occupation for women,” as long as the woman had “a business head and [knew] how to count up profit and loss” as well as experience “making all kinds of cakes in the best homemade way.”
Baltimore was the 6th-largest city in the United States around this time, and had a number of tea rooms. The most famous and enduring is the tea room in the Women’s Exchange. Department stores like Hutzler’s had a tea room inside the store. The Parkway Theater on North Avenue had a tea room which was “swarmed” with people waiting for the second showing of films each day. In segregated Baltimore there was also at least one Black-owned tea room – “The Little Gem” in Sandtown on Robert Street.
In 1914, author Julian Street came to Baltimore and visited the Women’s Exchange where he encountered a “great numbers of ladies sitting upon tall stools and eating at a lunch-counter.” He described the sight as “a somewhat curious spectacle, perhaps, but neither pleasing to the eye nor thrilling to the senses.”
1915 promotional cookbook showing “Dainty” food, Duke University
In the mid-19th century, American society began to develop the stereotype that women preferred different kinds of foods than men. Delmonico steak might be alright for men, but women require something “daintier” – things like cakes, fruit, salads, and egg dishes.
“The development of dining-out options for women was accompanied by a growing sense that women had their own preferences and could, at least in the company of other ladies, indulge them. The obvious advantage of all-female lunches was that women could partake of what they actually liked to eat.” – Ten Restaurants That Changed America
The tea rooms became a place not just for socializing but for politics including suffrage and prohibition. The Southern Tea Room at 206 Park Avenue hosted lectures on women’s suffrage and greeted suffragette Alice Paul with a reception in 1910.
Alice Paul visits the Southern Tea Room, Baltimore Sun, 1910
Marguerite Schertle was a tea room waitress for nearly 80 years. At age 92 she was profiled in “Maryland’s Vanishing Lives” where she shared the memories of tea room culture, where the customers were known by name as “Miss this and Miss that,” desserts like butterscotch and charlotte russe were still served, and where oftentimes sisters were employed side by side. Her own sister “Miss Anna” had worked with her at the Women’s Exchange until her death in 1992. The women had even married “look-alike” brothers and started families in adjacent bungalows in Hamilton. Schertle passed away in 2001 at 100 years old.
Before her half-century-long tenure at the Women’s Exchange, Schertle had worked for 20 years across the street at the Dutch Tea Room at 314 N. Charles.
The Dutch Tea Room had been opened in 1904 by Natalie Cole, who was, according to the Baltimore Sun, a “lady of social standing.” The popular tea room was even visited by President Wilson – almost. In 1913 he stopped by with his family but the place was too crowded so they went to the Rennert instead. Cole still got to serve her country in 1917, when the tea room baked 300 “extra fine” fruit cakes for soldiers at Camp Meade.
In 1918 Natalie Cole married William Wilson Galbreath, who is listed in some directories as a salesman of “porcelain products.” Hmm. Cole and her husband passed away in 1959 and 1952, respectively. I’m not sure when the Dutch Tea Room actually closed for business.
An October 1904 Baltimore Sun article claimed the great fire in February brought enterprising women to open lunch rooms
According to the Baltimore Sun obituary for Marguerite Schertle, when she’d worked at the Dutch Tea Room she had baked “Lady Baltimore, orange and Wellesley fudge cakes.”
I don’t have recipes for those cakes but I found a recipe in an undated, unpublished manuscript for a “Martha Washington Cake,” attributed to the Dutch Tea Room. The cake is actually a predecessor to Boston Creme Pie, with a custard filling and minus the chocolate topping. Although Boston Creme Pie has been sometimes called “Washington Pie” (or Cake), the Martha name is rarer – it’s typically known as a “Martha Washington Cream Pie.” The name is obviously more dainty and befitting a tea room.
Early 20th century menus suggest that both a cup of tea and a slice of cake would run about fifteen cents – $1.92 in today’s money. At that price, I could go for a tea room lunch. Myself and most dainty ladies would be quick to notice that it leaves more money and appetite for a burger and a beer for dinner. Male accompaniment optional, thanks.
Recipe:
Cake:
½ cup sugar
½ cup flour
3 eggs
Beat yolks then add the sugar. Fold in stiffly beaten whites, then gently fold in flour, stirring as little as possible. Bake in one cake tin. (A smaller taller cake might be preferable to the 9″ tin I used.)
Filling:
1 cup milk
1 egg
½ cup sugar
¼ cup flour
vanilla to taste
Scald the milk. Beat flour, sugar and egg in a separate bowl then mix in ¼ to ½ cup of the scalded milk. Return to pan and cook over medium heat until thickened. Cool thoroughly.
Split the cake vertically and spread filling in the middle. Top with powdered sugar.
