Tag: cakes

7-Up Cake, Georgia L. Cannon & Bernice Baine

Georgia L. Cannon of Delmar seems like she would have been a good one to have on your side. In 1983, when Delmar councilman Ed Feeney was asked to resign, Cannon penned a passionate letter to the Salisbury Daily Times. “Thank the Lord for someone who will stand firm in his beliefs,” she wrote. “I have heard Ed Feeney pray many times in our church for his fellow councilmen. I wonder if any one of them has ever said a prayer for him?”

From newspaper articles, I have a hard time grasping the finer points of Feeney’s scandal. I only know that Cannon had his back.

In April of that year, she wrote to the paper to honor a neighbor who had died. “Josh [Gibbs] was a familiar figure around town mowing lawns and raking leaves for people,” she said.

And in October, she wrote another letter bringing attention to Lynn Bogardus, Delmar’s Miss Fire Prevention who went on to win Miss Delaware, and Lisa and Eva Jackson who won awards in a baton twirling competition.

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Cocoanut Cake from The Chas. A. Vogeler Co’s Cookery Book

Like many local history enthusiasts, I follow the social media of Evan Woodward, a.k.a. SalvageArc, who digs into forgotten privies in Baltimore and beyond, unearthing the pottery shards, bones, bottles, and other non-biodegradable relics that people once threw into their privies. (The you-know-what and any other gross organic matter have all turned into dirt at this point.) I really regret that I didn’t know about his work when I lived in a c.1880s rowhouse!

A while back, one of the items Woodward unearthed was an intact bottle with the name “A. Vogeler” on the side. I immediately recognized a connection with a cookbook in my digital collection, “The Chas. A. Vogeler Co’s Cookery Book And Book of Comfort & Health,” printed in Baltimore in 1896.

I’m sure I have mentioned here before, but older cookbooks often contain medical remedies. In the times before over-the-counter medicine was commonly available, it fell on the lady of the house to manage any poultice or formula needed to cure the ailments of the members of her household. Remedies found in my collection span the gamut from “Recipe for Hair Tonic” to “Cure for Cancer.”

I can’t imagine how stressful this must have been. It’s no wonder that people were all-too-happy to turn from home remedies to sometimes equally questionable tonics, salves, and cure-alls peddled by pharmacists and “snake oil salesmen.”

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Zucchini Spice Cake ala B.G.E.

“We have made several notices of various improvements and inventions for cooking and heating by gas,” read an article in the Baltimore Sun in 1854, “and we have no doubt the result will eventually prove important to the world.” At a fair in Philadelphia, a gas stove made by Andrew Mayer had been used to roast a 14lb piece of beef for two hours. “The meat was partaken by a number of persons,” the Sun wrote, “and highly enjoyed.”

Cooking was an ordeal that required the acquisition of wood or coal to heat a stove. Controlling the heat was a challenge. And the inconveniences affected more than just the cook. The fuel produced ash and smoke. Airborne cinders could cause mass destruction.

But gas stoves didn’t catch on immediately. In many homes, a stove served other functions, like heating the house. Some gas ranges accounted for this, while others did not. For some people, a cozy open hearth or a radiating wood stove were comforting presences. And learning to cook on a new device doesn’t exactly excite people who were tasked with cooking for a family day-in and day-out.

Gas gradually caught on, with the help of celebrity chefs like Alexis Soyer – a French author of popular cookbooks. Stateside, home economists like Sarah Tyson Rorer demonstrated how to cook on the new devices, and extolled the ways gas cooking could save time and money.

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(Pickled) Citron Cake

After successfully growing citron melons this summer, I found that I had even more melons than required to make Agnes Poist’s Old-Fashioned Citron Preserve.

I used the extra melons to make Mrs. Benjamin Chew Howard‘s recipe for citron pickles, seasoned with vinegar, brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. Howard’s recipe yielded a tasty syrupy concoction that might be good for cocktails or other creative uses, but I was a bit at a loss for what to do with the pickled citron melon flesh. Snacking? Fans of pickled watermelon rind might say so, but I don’t tend to snack on something like this. I worried about it rotting in the fridge.

Louisville Kentucky Courier-Journal, 1953

I decided to put the “citron” to the test, as I had intended to do with Poist’s preserve. That recipe preserved the melon in a sugar syrup flavored with citrus peel. It could allegedly be used in cakes, like actual citron. Unfortunately, it molded before I got around to trying to bake with it.

What if I baked a cake with pickled citron? The idea sounded a little weird but I thought I’d try it anyway, to see just how well the citron melon could live up to its namesake.

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Cinnamon Cake, Zelma T. Cole (a personal essay)

Fairly early in the pandemic, I moved to a new house.

I felt conflicted, leaving the 1880s rowhouse on Howard Street that I’d bought in 2009. But it had some issues that were becoming bothersome. The dining room was cramped and dark, and the kitchen small and awkward, making the increasing Old Line Plate-related press requests to film or photograph me there unfeasible. We’d filmed the 2019 Baltimore Sun bit in my cousin’s Medfield kitchen. Plus… I really wanted a porch.

When we went to view the house that would become our new home, we were nervous if it was even ethical to do so, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Masked and gloved, we toured a spacious place not far from our own and we made an offer.

Real-estate boringness ensued. Suspenseful for us, dull to read about. Through luck, privilege, a little of my own savvy and diligence (if I do say so myself), and the help of our excellent real estate agent, we somehow ended up moving in May of 2020. We carried half our things on foot.

I soon learned that the model we bought was called a “Daylight Rowhouse.” Built to be wider rather than deeper, there was a window in each room. Many of these houses didn’t even require skylights. Builders began advertising this style to Baltimore’s upwardly mobile around 1915. “Why buy an old house with small dark and ill-ventilated rooms, when a house 20 feet wide, 7 rooms and bath… can be had for the same money?,” read one ad in the Sun. Hey! That’s how I felt, over a century later! Suffice it to say, we love it here.

from The Baltimore Rowhouse by Mary Ellen Hayward and Charles Belfoure
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