Mrs. Ronie Venables made honorable-mention in the first annual “National Chicken Cooking Contest” at the Delmarva Chicken Festival in 1949. Were she able to prepare her fried chicken on a wood-burning stove, she told a Universal Press reporter, she could have beaten out Mrs. A.L. Karlik for first place. The Press reporter contrasted the two contestants by describing Karlik as “pretty [and] young,” and referring to Venables as a “70-year old farm woman.”
In that article, Venables shared her prize-winning recipe in vague terms:
“A chicken, salt, pepper, egg, milk, flour and shortening. She stews the chicken, seasons it, dips it in a mixture of egg, milk and flour then fries it.”
She declared that “the secret… is in putting the water in which the chicken is stewed on the chicken after it is fried.”
For her part, Mrs. Karlik told the Wilmington, Delaware News-Journal that she was “flabbergasted” to have beat out the other 140 contestants. Family and friends had persuaded Karlik to enter the competition. She triumphed with “Broiled Chicken Deluxe,” a recipe that she frequently made for her husband and 10-year old son.
Wilmington News Journal, July 1949. Karlik is 2nd from right.
You might think that Karlik and Venables would walk off into the sunset, Karlik with her prize-money and deep-freezer, and Venables with a fun memory, but that isn’t exactly what happened. Cooking contests may seem blasé today, but the Delmarva Chicken Festival and the accompanying cooking contest were a big deal.
For Edna Karlik, the memory of her victory would resurface again and again.
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