baltimore Archives - Page 6 of 7

Unsurpassed Doughnuts, Elizabeth Staats

December 10, 2017January 12, 2019

Elizabeth Staats (1852-1933, Kent County) collected recipes – hundreds of them.

The collection started with a scrapbook Staats inherited from her mother Mary Griffith (1829-1892), whose original book contains handwritten recipes for food as well as things like soap and a “cure for cholera.” Staats finished that book before compiling the second book of over 300 recipes. (The two books are now housed at the Maryland Historical Society.) She was partial to cakes and desserts, although she occasionally clipped recipes for things like “Cheese Fondu”, scrapple, or deviled crabs. Many of the recipes are crossed out, “no good” written beside them, or with newer scraps pasted right over the old handwritten recipes.

There’s a social register’s worth of sweets: “Fannie Goodall’s” Chocolate Cake; “Alice Drekas’” Boiled Icing; “Laura Townsend’s” Crullers.

But Staats didn’t just rely on her extended personal network for recipe ideas – she had access to newspapers and multiple magazines like “The Country Gentleman,” “Ladies’ Home Journal,” and “Good Housekeeping.”

Good Housekeeping Volume 35, 1902

This recipe for “Unsurpassed Doughnuts” came from the latter. Good Housekeeping was founded in 1885 by publisher Clark W. Bryan with a mission to “perpetuate perfection as may be obtained in the household.” The new magazine combined that movement towards “domestic science” with fiction, poetry, and even some puzzles.

Paging through Staats’ scrapbooks, I could easily envision a woman spending leisurely afternoons poring over the magazine, clipping out good things she would like to eat.

Rebus, Good Housekeeping Volume 35, 1902

Below her transcription of the doughnut recipe, Staats wrote “”Fine. Used this winter 1903.” Unlike so many others in the scrapbooks, this recipe has been tried – and approved. It had been submitted to Good Housekeeping my a Mrs. N.W. (Charlotte) Northrup, of Grand Rapids MI.

As is so often the case, the yeast component is basically unknowable. Its hard to understand how a recipe could even have meaning with such a huge variable. Nevertheless, I used a few teaspoons of dry yeast, and set the ingredients out to ferment overnight as instructed.

I made these doughnuts on the day of the Mayor’s Annual Christmas Parade. We cooked them up in my cousins’ Medfield kitchen and shared them with neighbors. They were pretty great. So was the parade, as usual.

Recipe:

“1 cup sugar, 3 cups milk, 1 cup yeast, make these into a sponge and let stand overnight; in the morning add 1 cup sugar, ½ cup butter, 3 eggs, ½ nutmeg, ½ tea-spoon soda, stir in flour until stiff.Let rise again, then mix stiff enough to roll, and cut into shape desired. Let rise again until light, then fry.Fine. Used this winter 1903To save grease in frying doughnuts; put ½ teaspoonfull of ginger in grease when hot.”

Recipe from Maryland Historical Society MS 1765, “Mary Black Griffith Cookbook”, via Good Gousekeeping Volume 35, 1902

Interpretation, as I recall it:

2 Cups sugar
3 Cups milk (room temperature)
4.5 teaspoons dry yeast
.5 Cup butter, soft
.5 tsp salt
3 eggs
.5 tsp nutmeg
.5 Teaspoons baking soda
flour (6-8 cups)

Combine 1 cup of sugar with the milk and yeast; let stand over night. In the morning add the other cup of sugar, then beat in eggs one by one. Beat in butter plus the other ingredients. Gradually add flour until dough starts to become smooth and form a ball that pulls away from the sides of mixer or bowl. Knead for about a minute then leave to rise for about 2 hours.
Beat down and roll to about ½” thickness, cut into desired shapes and let rise another 1-2 hours – until puffing up.
Fry in hot vegetable oil until golden brown – about 1-2 minutes each side.
Roll in sugar mixed with cinnamon and nutmeg. Accept compliments graciously.

Spinach Deluxe, Victoria Frank Albert

November 18, 2017January 12, 2019

Once again I turned to The Park School Cookbook for some low-stress dinner ideas. I’m getting a surprising amount of mileage out of this little book.

The recipe comes from Victoria Frank Albert, who was actually a grand-daughter of the school’s founder, Eli Frank, Sr.

In my decades of living in Baltimore, I’ve noticed the assortment of private schools that serve the city’s well-to-do, with The Park School vaguely distinguished as the “Animal Collective school.”

Eli Frank Sr & Eli Frank Jr, Jewish Museum of Maryland

As it turns out, The Park School was actually founded in response to some controversial decisions from our old racist pal Mayor Preston in regards to the school board.

I actually have no way of judging the wisdom of Preston’s firing and replacement of school board officials including Eli Frank. It certainly caused a newspaper stir, and many people questioned whether Preston should be courting controversy so soon after his narrow victory. The actual policies and records of the school board officials are largely left out of the news stories.

The end result was, according to The Park School website:

“In March of 1912, Eli Frank Sr., a Commissioner who was fired by Preston; Goucher Professor Hans Froelicher Sr. and General Lawrason Riggs, who both resigned, and a group of 13 men, convened a meeting to discuss the founding of a new school. Knowing that many Jewish parents, seeking to enroll their children in private schools, faced quotas if not outright refusal, the founders created Park as the first non-sectarian independent school in Baltimore. The school embraced progressivism and became a national leader in the Progressive Education movement.”

The school opened that September in its original location on Auchentoroly Terrace across from Druid Hill Park.

The Park School on Auchentoroly Terrace, parkschool.net

The curriculum took advantage of the location with outdoor instruction – in 1921 they even had a shoemaker design a shoe for active children in the local climate, the “Park School Shoe.”

In 1954, the year Victoria Frank graduated, the school began to accept African American pupils. (They were one of the first private schools in the region to do so, for whatever that is worth.) In the 1960s and 70s, they welcomed lecturers and performers who educated the student population on poverty and segregation as well as black theater and the arts.

I couldn’t find out as much about Mrs. Albert herself – I believe she may have moved to Connecticut, where her husband, Leonard Albert, is from.

I used fresh spinach for this recipe. I was surprised to find everything including the mushroom soup at the organic store where we refill our detergent, so this turned out to be a rather *upscale* version of this mid-century recipe. Spinach deluxe deluxe.

We’ll be revisiting the Park School Cookbook yet again soon with a recipe from another Jewish family who had a hand in the history of Baltimore.

.5 Lb medium noodles
2 lbs spinach, cooked and chopped
.75 Cup cream of mushroom soup
.25 Cup milk
black pepper
.5 Teaspoon paprika
.5 Lb coursely grated Swiss cheese

Cook spinach. Drain and chop. Cook noodles as directed on package. Rinse in cold water. Mix soup and milk over low heat. Stir in spinach. In a greased baking dish, arrange ½ of noodles, sprinkle with ½ of cheese & seasonings. Spoon over all of spinach mixture. Add remaining noodles, top with remaining cheese. Bake in 400° oven for 15 minutes or until cheese bubbles.

Hutzler’s Potato Chip Cookies

December 21, 2016January 13, 2019

“Every year in the 50s, my mother, my grandmother and I went downtown to do our Christmas shopping,” A. Zoland Leishear fondly recalled in the Baltimore Sun in 1989. The store had been closed all of two months and the nostalgia was stirred. Leishear recalled a picturesque scene of streetcar wire sparks lighting up the snow, dazzling window displays and shopping trips ended with hot fudge sundaes.

feature in the Baltimore Sun, 1989

Hutzler’s had it’s origins in the late 1850’s, and opened the famed “palace” on Howard street in 1888. Long before Hutzler’s charmed patrons from Barbara Mikulski to John Waters, the stores may well have been patronized by early Maryland cookbook authors Jane Gilmor Howard or “Queen of the Kitchen” Mary Tyson.

1930 advertisement for Hutzler’s

A generation later, department store shopping had developed from a convenience into an experience. Good food is such a direct route to pleasant associations that it makes complete sense that retailers would want to impress on shoppers in this way. Any fan of IKEA meatballs could attest to that. Whether it is these potato chip cookies, the cheddar bread or something more substantial, many shoppers have fond recollections of snacks and meals eaten at one of Hutzler’s numerous dining facilities.

Jacques Kelly (who has to be quoted in this blog more than any other individual!) reminisced:

“What do I miss about Hutzler’s? For starters, the coffee chiffon pie from the Quixie restaurant. When that particular lunch area closed about 1972, I wrote a two-page letter of complaint.”

As is so often the case when we look to the past -especially in Maryland- these pleasant memories are not a universal experience. In the 1910s, columns began to appear in the Afro-American, complaining of Hutzlers and other department stores increasing efforts to alienate black shoppers. This period of segregation lasted from roughly 1930 to 1960, during which time black patrons couldn’t dine in Hutzler’s, try on clothing or hats, or open store accounts.

As sit-ins and protests erupted at lunch counters and department stores around the city in the 60s, Hutzler’s eventually changed with the times.

Michael Lisicky’s comprehensive book “Hutzler’s: Where Baltimore Shops” recounts the Hutzler empire’s rise and fall. Alongside so many other institutions, its lifespan was a reflection of the beauty, excess, and disgrace of Baltimore.

Hutzlers Towson Valley View Room Jan 1989, Kevin Mueller on flickr

Back to the food. I reached out to Lisicky who offered this insight into why the food memories of Hutzler remain so near and dear to many Baltimoreans:

“There was a time when department store restaurants, or tea rooms, acted as some of the finer dining spots in the cities they served. That was especially true at Hutzler’s. Hutzler’s 6th floor Colonial Restaurant was one of Baltimore’s finer diner rooms and was a downtown social epicenter. Most people called it the Tea Room but Hutzler’s never did. In the end, it didn’t matter and still doesn’t. The Maryland Historical Society houses many of the store’s archives, including the recipe files for the Valley View Room at Towson. A number of Baltimoreans preferred the food downtown. Hutzler’s diehards say that Towson wasn’t downtown, at least culinary-wise but that popular and important Towson store kept the company alive. People fondly recall the Chicken Chow Mein served in the downstairs Luncheonette. It was cheap and was an introduction to ethnic food for many mid-century diners. Little did they know it was made with turkey. The most requested recipe from Hutzler’s? Lady Baltimore Cake. Of all of the recipe cards that still remain, Hutzler’s Lady Baltimore Cake recipe went the way of the store. Department store restaurants are few and far between these days. I’m not sure where exactly to send people these days, at least within an easy drive. There’s always Nordstrom, they are an anomaly, but they aren’t Hutzler’s.” – Michael Lisicky, department store historian

“Where Baltimore Shops” contains recipes for crab cakes, imperial crab, crab and shrimp casserole, deviled filet of cod, Scampi di Marsala, Spaghetti a la Caruso, shrimp salad, cheese bread, chocolate chiffon pie, and fudge cake.

It does not contain the recipe for these famous potato chip cookies. Instead, the recipe has been circulated for years via the Baltimore Sun Recipe Finder, as well as other Maryland cookbooks such as my BGE “Chesapeake Bay Cooking.”

These cookies are best served with a glass of milk and some philosophical questions about nostalgia.

“There are places that may be as luxurious or as opulent. But there are none so fine, nor any so grand, none that capture my imagination or so define an experience as Hutzler’s, downtown at Christmas.” – A. Zoland Leishear, Baltimore Sun, 1989

Recipe:

1 Cup softened butter
1 Cup sugar
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
2.5 Cups sifted flour
.5 Cups chopped nuts
.5 Cups crushed potato chips
egg white slightly beaten

Thoroughly cream butter or margarine and 2/3 cup sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Fold next three ingredients into creamed mixture. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place 2-inches apart on greased baking sheet. Flatten with tines of fork in two directions. Brush with egg white and sprinkle with remaining 1/3 cup sugar. Bake at 350° for 15 to 20 minutes. Makes approximately 4 ½ dozen cookies.

Delane Brown’s Casserole of Ham and Hominy + Jelly Roll

April 15, 2016February 10, 2022

“Canned vegetables are not only a great convenience to the housewife, but when fresh, young products are used and canned under careful supervision by modern methods; they retain more of their food value and vitamine content than most freshly cooked vegetables. This has been recently proved by investigations carried on in nutrition laboratories.
Therefore, the housewife who is watchful for the health of her family, will see to it that their diet contains carefully selected canned vegetables.” – Delane Brown

In the late 1920′s a local purveyor of “fine foods” published a little cookbook featuring recipes for the products they produced and distributed. “Delane Brown’s Cook Book: Good Things to Eat and How to Serve Them” is decorated on the cover with an illustration of faceted plates fit for a fine occasion. Below the title is a shelf of containers which surely contain only the finest spices and the purest, freshest ingredients.

Delane Brown boasted that the Purity Cross products they carried were “carefully selected” and “packed the very day they leave the farm.” At the time of this book’s publication, regulation had weeded out most of the outright toxic and mislabeled food products, leaving the market to sort out what consumers wanted other than to not be poisoned. The quest for purity reached ever onward and upward and canning technology advanced steadily.

Delane Brown promotional mailer

Where a generation before was probably content to survive the winter without scurvy, consumers of the 1920’s faced an exciting array of options ranging from novel fruits of other climate zones to New Jersey-based Purity Cross’ signature shelf-stable cream sauces in the form of “Lobster á la Newburg,” “Welsh Rarebit,” and “Chicken á la King.”

Delane Brown encouraged housewives to carefully prepare Purity Cross canned delicacies in presentations that presaged the comical heights of mid-century home-making, complete with toast points, parsley sprigs, “little triangular slices of lemon”, and served (of course) with Delane Brown’s own “Sweet Ku-Kumber Rings.”

The aspirational tone of some of the recipes in the book may be amusing in light of a modern middle-class distaste for canned food, but adventurous cooks have always aimed to impress and to adapt to new ideas.

This little cookbook has consumed a completely disproportionate amount of my time; my research bordered on obsession. Who the %*&! is Delane Brown? What do these products look like? Whatever became of Delane Brown?

What little I did find is that:

In 1924, “down in Baltimore, a chap by the name of Delane Brown [was] apparently doing a good business selling salted peanuts by mail,” according to a peanut industry publication.
A trip to the Maryland Historical Society to get a glimpse of the face of Delane Brown led to me staring at several photos of a box of figs and nothing more. Since this photo had been kindly retrieved for me and I had donned the requisite nitrile gloves, I stared at these figs for as long as possible with a feigned sense of purpose
The person behind Delane Brown actually appears to be a businessman named George Dugdale, who has been quoted in a number of trade publications about the mail-order business and advertising.
The address in the cookbook is ‘1501 Guilford Avenue’; Delane Brown’s business was located in the famous “Copy Cat Building”
The company later moved to Towson, and probably went out of business in 1956
George Dugdale passed away in December 1960
George Dugdale’s wife was named Dorothy Elaine. “D. Elaine.” This is what I wasted hours of my life for?!?!?!
Mrs. Dugdale was an avid golfer

I didn’t go all out and make one of the more fancy or bizarre recipes in “Good Things to Eat.” I live in a world where canned Welsh Rarebit is difficult to find on short notice. I opted instead to make a dish involving another item distributed by Delane Brown, Smithfield Ham, combined with a classic Baltimore canned product, hominy.

I couldn’t find Manning’s hominy at Safeway. I was going to write a little bit more about hominy but look how much space I’ve wasted already. We’ll save that for another day. I served the dish with canned green beans, undoubtedly picked at their peak of freshness. They tasted like salt. I also took a stab at Delane Brown’s “new way” of making a jelly roll, filled by my choice with lemon curd, hand-curdled just moments after falling from the tree.

Recipes:

Casserole of Ham and Hominy

3 cups cooked hominy
4 tb butter
4 tb flour
2 cups milk
¼ cup chopped onion
3 cups chopped Smithfield Ham

Make a white sauce from the butter, flour and milk and add the onions to it. Put a layer of hominy in a buttered baking dish, cover with a layer of the white sauce and spread with ham. Repeat the layers of hominy, sauce and ham until all are used, having the hominy on top. [yeah I failed this part – ed] Bake in a moderately hot oven – 350 to 375 degrees – for thirty minutes or until beginning to brown. Serve hot.

Jelly Roll

3 eggs
3 tb sugar
3 tb flour
½ tsp baking powdr
1 glass jelly

Beat the egg yolks until very light and foamy. Add the sugar and beat again until well blended. Sift the flour with the baking powder and add to the egg mixture. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold in. Pour the batter into a well buttered shallow pan about ten inches wide and about twelve to fourteen inches long. Bake in a moderate oven – 350 degrees – for eight to ten minutes, remove from oven and turn pan upside down until cold. Then lay on a sheet of paper. Spread with jelly and roll up. Sprinkle the outside with powdered sugar or spread with icing. This recipe defies all the old rules for jelly roll, but try it once and you will not want to use any other. Do not add any more sugar or flour even if you think then amount given is too small.

An emphasis on purity and finery continues

Recipes from “Delane Brown’s Cook Book: Good Things to Eat and How to Serve Them”

Portuguese Sweet Bread, Sgt. Mercedes Rankin

March 4, 2016January 13, 2019

When Mercedes V. Rankin shared her recipe for “Portuguese Sweet Bread” in the “Bethel Cookbook”, assembled by the parish of the historic Bethel A.M.E. in 1979, she probably hoped to do her part to raise money for her church.

What she surely did not know is that some random weirdo would bake this bread 36 years later, search her name and uncover stories from her past and other ways she strove to make a difference.

Mercedes Rankin, I learned, was one of the first female police officers put “on the beat” in Baltimore.

Major Patricia Mullen, Sergeant Mercedes Rankin, Carol Channing, ? 1978, Baltimore City Police History

Born Mercedes Rawlings in 1933, Rankin joined the Baltimore City Police Department in 1960. In 1968 she married fellow police officer Donald O. Rankin.
Mercedes Rankin appears to have been an involved officer, engaging with community groups, working with troubled youth and the elderly, and in 1969 receiving a citation for her work developing a block mothers program to aid children in need.

In 1973, when the BCPD ended the policy of discrimination based on gender, Mercedes became one of the first two officers put on the beat, along with Sergeant Bessie Norris, who was in the Narcotics division.

“They won’t last a day,” said one male member of the force when told of the change. – ‘Sex Distinction Ended in Police Hiring, Duties’, Baltimore Sun, 1973

Although many people seem to have amnesia about this, Baltimore had its share of turmoil in the 1970s. Mercedes Rankin was assigned to patrol a troubled area in the Northwestern District. In 1977, one of the youth she worked with after school was slain before he could testify in a robbery case. “Tony was just a charming little fellow,” she said of the young man.

Mercedes Rankin Baltimore Sun photo, David Hobby (via ebay)

Rankin seems to have reacted to her promotion humbly and in stride.

“Sergeant Rankin said yesterday she is not frightened by her high-crime-area assignment. “I think I can handle myself. I feel like I’m one of the boys,” she said. “Once more women are assigned, they’ll be accepted.” – ‘Sex Distinction Ended in Police Hiring, Duties’, Baltimore Sun, 1973

One of the most telling insights into the character of Mercedes Rankin is a letter she wrote to the Baltimore Sun in 1965 in apparent response to Rev. Marion Bascom making a quip about police getting “kick-backs”:

“Officers Catania and Osborne… practically gave their lives to save the lives of seven small children. Did they get kick backs?…
Violet Hill Whyte… has done little else but worry about Baltimore’s people and their problems…
If police are receiving kick-backs and Bascom has knowledge of this, why doesn’t he become a better citizen and report it to the proper authorities?
Mr. Bascom should go into the districts and see an officer receive a smile from the people he helps. This is his kick-back, his reward, and that smile is far more precious than any kick-back he could ever receive. Take it from one who knows.”

Note how she champions the accomplishments of others. At least in the press, Rankin didn’t make much of her groundbreaking status, the apparent empathy and outreach that she brought to the position, nor to the fact that she was promoted to sergeant 11 months before her husband Donald.

At the time when Mercedes Rankin contributed her recipe to the Bethel Cookbook, the pastor would have been John Richard Bryant, who is credited with reviving the church and growing the congregation.
Dating back to 1785, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Bethel A.M.E.) Baltimore is the oldest independent continuously operating African American church in the state of Maryland.

According to Wikipedia: “Portuguese sweet bread is common in both Hawaiian cuisine and New England cuisine as it was brought to those regions by their large Portuguese immigrant populations.” This sweet bread recipe was traditionally baked around the Easter holiday.

Rankin’s recipe didn’t specify whether the butter should be melted, and the internet seems to go either way. I went with melted butter and this turned out fine. I was worried by how dark the crust became in the oven but after I let it sit and cut it open, it yielded a delicious sweet snack. I enjoyed it with lime curd, and later used it to make excellent french toast.

Mercedes Rankin passed away in September of 2011. According the the Baltimore Police Department website:

“Hundreds of women currently serve on the Baltimore Police Department. Female police officers serve as detectives, sergeants, lieutenants, and members of the command staff in a variety of assignments within the department. There are NO assignments that a female can’t do or isn’t open to, including police commissioner.”

Recipe:

2 package yeast
.25 Cup lukewarm water
1 Cup sugar
1 Teaspoon salt
6 Cup regular flour
3 eggs, beaten
1 Cup milk
1 stick butter, melted

Start yeast in small bowl in lukewarm water with a pinch of sugar, until mixture begins to bubble and rise. Combine remaining sugar, salt and 4 cups of the flour in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and drop in the eggs, yeast mixture and milk. Mix with spoon. Add butter and more flour and knead in with hands. Gradually add enough flour until dough can be shaped into a big soft ball and begins to pull away from sides of bowl when mixed. Knead until dough becomes smooth, shiny and rubbery. Cover with damp cloth and allow to rise until doubled in size (about one hour). Punch dough down and allow to “rest” 10 minutes. Shape into two loaves, place on baking sheet(s). Let loaves rise again about 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 350°. Place loaves on top rack of oven. Bake about 45 minutes to one hour – until crusts are golden brown. If desired, brush top of loaves with egg yolk mixed with water after baking for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool before slicing. Makes 2 loaves.

Recipe adapted from Bethel Cookbook, contributed by parishioner Mercedes V. Rankin