The (possibly questionable) story of the late-1970s “Grannie’s Goodies from Somerset County” cookbook is that the residents of the Tawes Nursing Home in Crisfield complained about the food so much that the director asked for recipes, which were later compiled into the book. In the books’ preface, the nursing home’s activity director and compiler of the book, Becky Blizzard, simply stated that it was a fundraising project to buy a minibus. Whatever the circumstances, this book was a happy find for me at the Pratt Library. A second edition, “Tawes Home Cookbook #2,” was produced a few years later and sold well enough to go into a second printing.
Continue reading “Pocomoke Lace Cookies, Elizabeth Hall”Tag: cookies
Russian Tea Cakes
“All the tea I drank in Russia was delicious. It is brought overland from China, and always sold fresh; and not, as in this country, after it has lain for two or three years in warehouses.” – Sir James Edward Alexander 1830 in “Travels to the seat of war in the East, through Russia and the Crimea, in 1829″
The recipe once commonly known as ‘Russian Tea Cakes’ has many variations and twice as many names; Kourabiedes, Mexican Wedding Cakes, Biscochos, meltaways, pecan sandies. An informal poll of my friends also turned up ‘snowballs,’ ‘hermits,’ and ‘pecan puffs.’ These cookies’ tendency to be named for foreign countries may have helped them to take on some of these other confusing or inaccurate titles. It may be that the deceptive mask of confectioners’ sugar further obscures the variations within (anise, nuts, cinnamon…) One thing that seemingly everyone agrees on is that they are delicious.
I found versions of this recipe in “Grannie’s Goodies From Somerset County,” “300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County,” and “Fun With Food,” a cookbook compiled by the Baltimore chapter of the Jewish women’s organization The United Order of True Sisters. This alone represents a culturally and geographically diverse appreciation for these nutty little cookies here in Maryland, without even having to drag in Greece, Mexico or Russia.
There are some 19th century recipes for something called Russian Tea Cakes – but those recipes take the ‘cake’ part a little more seriously and often contain many eggs, which is not particularly common in modern recipes and would change the crumbly texture.
Some people believe that Russian Tea Cakes originated in Eastern Europe, but as far as I could tell, they inherited the name from the 19th-century American fascination with Russian tea culture.
“Russian Tea Parties” were common fundraising events. 1884, Baltimore Sun
“Queen of the Kitchen” Mary Lloyd Tyson printed this recipe for the “Russian Mode of Making Tea” in her 1870 cookbook:
“Put 1 tea-spoon of tea to each person that is to partake of the tea; place the leaves in a saucer, and slightly moisten them with cold water, and set them for 2 or 3 minutes in a hot oven; then put them in a tea-pot, having first rinsed it well; pour upon the leaves half the quantity of water needed, and add boiling water to the tea as you use it. Cover the spout and lid with a thick piece of flannel to keep in the aroma.
Chips of cherry bark placed in the tea-canister impart a fine flavor to the tea, but care must be taken not to let them be used.
A slice of lemon served in each up is considered an improvement.”
An 1888 book by Emanual Bonavia, M.D. on the cultivation of oranges and lemons noted that “the Russians are great tea-drinkers, and their favorite mode of drinking tea is with a slice of lemon with sugar…” The book optimistically pointed out the potential for “each Russian [to use] one lemon per day,” creating a vast market for the fruit. Once the trend inevitably spread to Central Asia, Bonavia added, “the future prospects of the lemon trade in India are not all bad.”
Modern American recipes for “Russian Tea” consist of an instant concoction containing lemonade mix and/or Tang. Not a lemon in sight. Bonavia may well be turning in his grave.
Russian Tea recipe card, yesterdish.com
Russian culinary historian William Pokhlyobkin wrote that tea in 19th century Russia was always served with some kind of cakes, cookies or candy – offering at least a tenuous tie between “Russian Tea Cakes” and actual Russian tea culture. I doubt that English surgeon Nathaniel Edward Yorke-Davies took cookies into consideration when, in his 1889 book “Foods For the Fat,” he advised “the Russians take [tea] with lemon-juice… In America we know it is customary to add cream, milk, or sugar, but for corpulent people the Russian mode would be best.”
Restaurant historian Jan Whitaker writes that “not until after World War I (and the Russian Revolution), when a very different wave of anti-revolution, pro-Czar Russian immigrants arrived, did explicitly and self-consciously Russian-themed restaurants come into being. They flourished in the 1920s and 1930s.” This timing fits in with the first appearances of the current formulation of “Russian Tea Cakes.” Like so many faux-exotic bits of American culture, maybe the name just sounded cool.
Recipe:
- 1 Cup butter
- .5 Cup confectioner’s sugar
- 2.75 Cups all-purpose flour, sifted
- .25 Teaspoon salt
- .75 Cups chopped nuts
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
Cream butter and sugar, add flour and salt, vanilla and nuts. (Or grind all in food processor then stir in nuts.) Shape into balls. Put on ungreased pan, well separated, and bake at 375°, about 15 minutes, or just until they begin to get light brown. “Immediately when out of oven roll in XXXX sugar and roll again in sugar when cold.”
Recipe adapted from “Fun With Food” by the United Order True Sisters, Baltimore, 1948
Kohn Cookies
“If any department store in Baltimore gave Hutzler’s a run for its money, it was Hochschild’s.“ – Michael J. Lisicky, Baltimore’s Bygone Department Stores: Many Happy Returns
According to Jacques Kelly, “Hochschild’s sold what you needed, not what you aspired to get.” In 1997, the Baltimore Sun columnist reminisced about the bargain basement at Hochschild Kohn’s, with its creaking wooden floors, in-store post office, and shelves of “pots, pans, cabinets full of embroidery thread, inexpensive tablecloths, phonograph records and scissors displays.”
Hochschild Kohn’s may not have had the high-fashion and prestige of Hutzler’s, but shoppers needed lamps, typewriters, pet supplies and fountain pens too. According to department store historian Michael J. Lisicky, “with a very strong line of basic merchandise, Hochschild’s was seen as ‘the people’s store’.” Hutzler’s had all the glamour, but Hochschild’s was a necessary mainstay.
Advertisement, Der Deutsche Correspondent, 1912
Hochschild Kohn’s was the outgrowth of a South Charles Street clothing store founded by the Kohn family in 1862. In 1897, brothers Louis & Benno Kohn pooled resources with friend Max Hochschild to open a “palace” at Howard and Lexington. The store was infamously cramped and confusing, with ad-hoc expansions built as the business empire grew. In 1923, the company announced plans to finally build a bigger space on a city block bounded by Howard, Franklin, Park, and Center Streets. As it was being built, Hochschild sold his stake in the store to retire, although he did maintain an office where he would “sit around and loaf” for many years until passing away at age 101 in 1957. Financial difficulties prevented the larger property from ever being fully completed as planned.
By 1945, the leadership of Hochschild Kohn’s consisted of Treasurer/V.P. Louis B. Kohn II, president Martin B. Kohn, and his wife Rosa. Rosa had been an editor for the New York Times Sunday magazine, and according to the family, her publicity acumen deserves credit for much of the department store’s success and growth during this era. In the 1950s, Hochschild Kohn’s expanded into the growing suburbs to reach markets in such as Anne Arundel County.
Hochschild’s Thanksgiving parade, Retro Baltimore
It was the wife Louis B. Kohn, II who contributed this cookie recipe to the Park School Cookbook. Born Frances Josephine Levy in 1916, she married Louis B. Kohn II (grandson of store founder Louis B. Kohn) in 1940. She charitably contributed to many organizations around Baltimore including Goucher College, Baltimore Clayworks, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Planned Parenthood. She passed away in 2012.
In the cookbook, the cookies are entitled “Kohn Cookies.” I am not sure whether that is referring to the family or to something served at the store. Certainly, Hochschild Kohn’s leaves a legacy of recipes behind, having produced at least one “Salad and Dessert Cook Book,” in 1933. That book was actually written by cookbook author Mabel Claire, and released as a promotional item for different stores, including Macy’s. These cookies do not appear in the Macy’s version of the recipe book, at any rate.
It bears infinite repetition that nostalgia for the glamorous era of downtown department stores deserves careful reconsideration. As stated in Baltimore Style Magazine: “in 1960, Hochschild’s served 120 Morgan State student demonstrators in the downtown store restaurant, becoming the first of Baltimore’s department stores to integrate and eventually change their strict policies of not allowing African-Americans to either try on or return clothing.“
Afro-American, 1945
The chain went out of business in 1983, just a few years before its rival, Hutzler’s threw in the towel. The store downtown on Lexington & Howard had been abandoned in 1977.
According to Baltimore Style, what many Baltimorean’s remember most about Hochschild Kohn’s was their Thanksgiving parade which made it’s way from the BMA to downtown each year from 1933 to 1966, signaling the start of Christmas Shopping season with a “jovial to some, terrifying to others” mechanized Santa Claus.
Christmastime advertisements boasted “dolls that look like real live children,” ostrich-plumed hats, Parisian ivory toilet accessories, aprons & caps “for the maid,” turkey roasters, and inexpensive fabric, ideal for men’s shirts or modern “women’s mannish waists.” The advertisements promised that “the delicious food, the dainty surroundings and the quiet restfulness” of their sixth floor Tea Room would “send you to your afternoon shopping refreshed and invigorated.”
Recipe:
- 4 eggs
- .5 Lb grated bitter chocolate
- 1.5 Cup brown sugar
- 1.5 Cup sugar
- 1 Cup flour
Beat sugar and eggs together. Add chocolate and beat well again. Add flour gradually. Drop from teaspoons to well-buttered cookie sheet (they spread quite a lot). Bake in 350° oven for 9 minutes for crisp cookies. 6 minutes for chewy cookies. This makes 100 cookies.
New Year’s Cookies
In 1906, The Frederick News printed a whimsical explanation for the ‘bakers dozen.’ A Dutch baker in the 1600’s bickered with an “ugly hag” over whether a dozen was twelve or thirteen, stingily sending the woman away with only twelve New Year’s cakes. His shop became cursed until the baker conceded that a dozen was thirteen.
The New Year’s Cakes (cookies were often known as cakes or “little cakes”) mentioned in this story would most likely be cookies bearing close relation to Speculaas, a spiced biscuit made around St. Nicholas Day in early December in the Netherlands and Belgium, and around Christmas in Germany.
Another similar but thicker molded biscuit, the German “Springerle”, are flavored with anise and also made around the Christmas holidays. These types of cookies bear close relation to gingerbread, which was never related to bread at all. Much like the confused etymology of scrapple, the word gingerbread originally came from the word ’gingerbrar’, simply referring to the preserved ginger used to spice these kinds of cookies.
The Montrose Democrat, PA, January 4th 1912
Caraway seed cakes had long been a customary food to commemorate the harvest in Europe. Harvest customs naturally drifted and morphed into Christmas celebrations, which in turn stretched into “New Years.”
Dutch New Years cakes were popular throughout the northeast united states but were most commonly associated with New York. Although the cookies appear in bestselling cookbook author Eliza Leslie’s 1828 book as “apees cakes”, her 1851 book “Directions for Cookery” refers to the same recipe as “New York Cakes,” noting that they are also known as “New Year Cakes.”
According to historian William Woys Weaver in “A Quaker Woman’s Cookbook,” Leslie’s recipe traces to the cooking school of Elizabeth Goodfellow in Philadelphia. Earlier versions appear as far back as the first American cookbook published by Amelia Simmons in 1796.
Amelia Simmons “American Cookery” 1796
Eliza Leslie’s many books were wildly popular and influential (and in fact her own parents were from Cecil County), but Weaver drew a closer connection between Maryland-born Goodfellow, whose husband was a Quaker clockmaker, and Quaker cookbook author Elizabeth Ellicott Lea. “Lea’s contact with Goodfellow may have been indirect, but it is clear that many of Lea’s friends and acquaintances had attended the cooking school,” resulting in many versions of Goodfellow recipes making their way into Lea’s book.
“For rural Quakers, [these cookies were] a special treat for Children at New Year’s… related to New Year’s cookies that were associated with the Dutch settlers in Colonial New York. Those cookies were often shaped with elaborate carved molds. The leavening in them was potash or pearl ash.” – William Woys Weaver, “A Quaker Woman’s Cookbook”
Dutch cookie mold for sale on etsy
I actually first noticed this recipe in a handwritten manuscript at the Maryland Historical Society; a personal cook-book belonging to Becky Amos, wife of a Baltimore bricklayer. That recipe, it turned out, was copied verbatim from Lea’s. That’s how these things work sometimes.
Mrs. B.C. Howard also published a nearly identical recipe in her 1873 book. Being the high-roller that she was, there is a little more butter, and a pinch of salt added. She also called for ‘soda’ instead of saleratus.
Although all three of my Maryland recipes opted for caraway seeds, I followed my palate and opted for coriander. If no less authority than Joyce White says its authentic then I’m in the clear.
I did have a New Years brunch and these cookies proved popular with adult humans, babies, and dogs.
Recipe:
- 2 c flour
- 1 c sugar
- 8oz butter, softened
- ½ tsp baking soda dissolved in…
- .25 to .5 pint milk
- .25 tsp salt
- caraway seeds, or crushed coriander seeds, grated lemon peel, nutmeg, etc. to taste
Preheat oven to 400°. Cream together butter and sugar. Gradually blend in flour (mixed with salt) until dough resembles pebbles. GRADUALLY add milk until all ingredients are moistened and dough forms a solid ball that is no longer sticky to touch. You may not need all of the milk! I used too much then had to add a ton of flour. I blame Mrs. B.C. Howard for that one. One 1890s recipe uses only 3tb of milk.
Roll thin and cut into shapes. If desired, stamp with designs or use a patterned rolling pin. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned on bottoms.
Hutzler’s Potato Chip Cookies
“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.
