Tag: chowder

Gertrude’s Crazy Chowder, Gertrude Comer

One of these days I’m going to stop choosing recipes before looking into whether there’s an uncover-able story. This is another new post with scant facts.
Still, I enjoyed looking into the life of Gertrude Comer, who contributed her “crazy” chowder to a cookbook put out by the Gatch Memorial United Methodist Church in the 1960s.

I do know that Gertrude lived most of her life in Northeast Baltimore, near where the Gatch Memorial United Methodist Church stands on Bel Air Road. In 1996, she told the Baltimore Sun about her desire to remain in the neighborhood. She looked forward to affordable senior housing being built nearby. “I would like to stay in my neighborhood and not have to repair an old house,” she said.

The old house in question was 5722 Belair Road, where Gertrude had lived with the Rubshaw family for many decades, just down the street from Gatch UMC.
I found Gertrude in many other peoples’ obituaries, including that of her mother, who died in 1961. Gertrude is mentioned, along with her sisters Helen Zepp, Mildred Kelly, and Betty Lou Rubshaw.

When and how Gertrude became a part of this family is a bit of a mystery. Her biological parents, according to her 2006 death certificate, were James C. Myers and Mary Jane Yager. Gertrude was born in West Virginia in 1916. The Rubshaw family, meanwhile, lived in Indiana at the time. By 1940, they had made their way to Martinsburg, WV, and Betty Lou worked with Gertrude at the Carlile Paper Box Company factory. They must have enjoyed working together – the sisters would later open a beauty parlor in Baltimore called the Shamrock Beauty Shop.

Gertrude’s death certificate, reclaimtherecords.org
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Rock Chowder, Mrs. Lyman C. Whittaker

With our food culture fixated on ‘chef as singular genius, driver of innovation and change,’ I’ve come to brag about how I prefer to value the contributions of home cooks. I like to tout and uplift cooking born of tradition and love -and yes- sometimes plain old drudgery. I make a show of respecting these unsung heroes and shunning the professionals.

But it’s never quite that simple, is it?

While a small portion of my recipes hail from named chefs and restaurants, perhaps an even bigger segment hail from a different type of professionals: home economists and dietitians. These cooks – usually women – provided countless recipes to corporate cookbooks and newspapers. They disseminated recipes through cooking classes. They also contributed quite a lot of recipes to community cookbooks.

I often don’t know I’ve chosen the recipe of a home economist until I’ve made the recipe and embarked on my research.

Mrs. Lyman C. Whittaker contributed this recipe for Rock Chowder to the 1976 “Ladies of St. Mary’s Cook Book,” a cookbook put out by the church of the same name on Duke of Gloucester Street in Annapolis. The book subtitle boasts “colonial flavor,” and many of the recipes are for local favorites like crab cakes, and this rockfish chowder. I was surprised that the recipe author was not originally from Maryland.

Mrs. Whittaker was born Gertrude Marie Speck in East Moline, IL on July 11, 1917. The Specks were a very socially prominent family, and young Gertrude received mentions in the paper throughout her youth for birthday parties, music and dance recitals, and Catholic clubs. The family had a cottage on Campbell’s Island in the Mississippi, where Gertrude frequently entertained friends. Honestly, the coverage of Gertrude’s social life in Illinois newspapers at times borders on gratuitous. The the Moline “Dispatch” even mentioned when she came home for the holidays in 1939.

  • Moline Dispatch, 1943
Continue reading “Rock Chowder, Mrs. Lyman C. Whittaker”

Maryland Chowder, Duchess of Windsor

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It’s pretty rare that I should have *too much information* about a person associated with a recipe. For years now I’ve sighed in frustration when all I can find on someone is a date of birth, a passing newspaper mention, a headstone.

This week’s recipe comes from a woman who has been so scrutinized and written about that there is practically no point in summarizing her life story.

Wallis Simpson, The Duchess of Windsor, remains a fascinating figure to many. Any time members of the British royal family come up in the news, many Baltimoreans like to reflect on our city’s brush with royalty.

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Fresh Garden Corn Chowder, Ivy Neck

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This rich corn soup is not unlike Elizabeth Ellicott Lea’s Corn Fricassee. The flavor of the corn is front and center (or, depending on your palate and your corn, the soup is bland).

The attribution in “Maryland’s Way” is “Mrs. Murray’s Bride’s Book, 1858.“ It is possible the recipe is to be found somewhere within the voluminous Cheston-Galloway papers at the Maryland Historical Society. The collection encompasses many descendants of Samuel Galloway, a Maryland merchant and slave trader in the 1700s.

Galloway owned an estate, Tulip Hill, in Anne Arundel County. His son James Cheston would build Ivy Neck nearby on the Rhode River in 1787. The homes remained within their large and tangled family tree for many generations.

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Ivy Neck, Maryland Historical Trust

Mrs. Murray was born Mary Hollingsworth Morris somewhere down that family tree, at an intersection of cousins Anne Cheston and Dr. Caspar Morris. Tracing family connections demonstrates the many ties between Baltimore and Philadelphia families, and Philly is where the Morris family resided before settling at Ivy Neck, on the Rhode River in Anne Arundel County. 

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Morris family Philadelphia home, The Morris family of Philadelphia

In 1844 the Morrises signed documents to gradually manumit all of the people that they had enslaved there. Four years later, Dr. Morris wrote a biography of abolitionist Margaret Mercer, an Anne Arundel County neighbor who worked with the controversial American Colonization Society. 

In Dr. Morris’ biography, he credits Mercer with influencing another local enslaver, Daniel Murray Esquire, to release his slaves. Murray then joined the efforts of the Colonization Society. There is still a county in Liberia named Maryland, a vestige of this attempt to “resettle” people who had in most cases become naturalized to North American culture and terrain.

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Ivy Neck photo showing outbuildings, E.H. Pickering, loc.gov

It was Murray’s son, Henry M. Murray, who married Mary Hollingsworth Morris in 1856. The family lived at Ivy Neck, perhaps with Mary’s “bride’s book,” but also with the help of servants, many of whom were probably the same people manumitted by Mary’s parents. The Ivy Neck property has two different tenant houses, one of which was home to a man named Daniel Boston who cooked for the Murray’s daughter Cornelia and her family at Ivy Neck in the 1930s.

The house at Ivy Neck burned down in 1944, and part of the property eventually went to the Smithsonian Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental Studies.
Well, there you have it, “Fresh Garden Corn Chowder.”

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Recipe:

6 ears fresh corn
6 cups milk
3 egg yolks
3 Tablespoons butter
1.5 Teaspoons salt
1.5 Teaspoons sugar
white pepper
chives
paprika

Shuck corn and remove silk, then grate corn off the cob into the soup pot; add milk and heat slowly. Beat egg yolks and work the soft butter into them; add a little of the hot corn and milk mixture to egg and butter, beating well; then stir this into the soup. Add salt, sugar and a dash of pepper and bring to a simmer. Serve hot with chopped chives and paprika.

Recipe adapted from “Maryland’s Way”, “Mrs. Murray’s Bride’s Book, 1858”

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Cheddar Chowder, Mrs. Janet Gadd Doehler

First Published in 1962 by The Episcopal Church Women of St. Paul’s Parrish in Queen Anne’s County, this spiral bound cookbook is of a type I come across frequently – the church or fund-raiser “community” cookbook. Usually spiral-bound, printed by various specialty companies, and containing home-grown illustrations if you’re lucky, these volumes are a great resource of recipes of ordinary people throughout several decades of the 20th century. They are also a huge source of frustration to a completist such as myself.

This recipe was contributed to “Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen” by a Mrs. Janet Gadd Doehler. Mrs. Doehler resided on the historical Sidney Gadd farm in Centreville Maryland, described in this Maryland Historical Trust document as “a very plain mid-19th century three bay; two and one half story frame building. It is unusual for that date in that the original kitchen was in the basement where there is a cooking fireplace.”
It seems possible that Janet is still alive – google turns up an award winning gardener in that general area and a ‘Janet and Sydney Gadd Doehler’ as supporters of Adkins Arboretum, also in that general area. I feel remiss that I did not get in touch with her – when working with newer recipes I sometimes forget that the involved parties may still be available.

Sidney Gadd Farm, Maryland Historical Trust

The first thing that most culinary historians will encounter in the older “receipt” collections or cooking texts is the lack of instructions by modern standards. “Cook it ’til it’s done,” is sometimes the extent of it. As cookbooks progress on to modernity, recipes get more and more informative. Yet even here we see examples of assuming a basic knowledge of cooking skills. “Make a white sauce with margarine, flour, and milk” is part of the instructions.

I used what I had on hand, substituting shallot for onion and cooked thick bacon for ham. Pretty liberal I guess. I also used butter instead of margarine because I don’t F around with the latter. I guess I ought to go post an angry review about how it didn’t turn out.
Actually it turned out tasty and hearty. In fact, using what you have on hand is often an accurate way to get in the spirit of older recipes. I also used stock instead of boiling water because I have to keep the constant kitchen scraps stock cycle going infinitely.∞

  • 2 Cups boiling water or stock
  • 2 Cups diced potato
  • .5 Cup sliced carrot
  • 1 Cup celery
  • .5 Cup chopped onion
  • 1.5 Teaspoons salt
  • .25 Teaspoons black pepper
  • .25 Cup butter
  • .25 Cup flour
  • 2 Cups milk
  • 2 Cups shredded Cheddar cheese
  • .125 Teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 Cup cubed, cooked ham

Add water to vegetables, salt and pepper. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Do not drain. Make a white sauce with butter, flour, and milk. Add cheese and soda; stir until melted. Cool the stock and vegetables to lukewarm. (Be sure vegetables are not hot. If cream sauce is added to the hot mixture, it will curdle.) Add ham and un-drained vegetables to cream sauce. Heat. Do not boil. Serves 6 to 8.
Variation: Omit ham and substitute 8 slices of crumbled bacon or 1 cup of cooked shrimp.

Recipe Adapted from “Queen Anne Goes to the Kitchen”

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