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.
Frank Hennessy never passed up a chance to promote National Beer. It was his job to do so for 18 years (1957 to 1975), and he approached the job with legendary gusto.
Advertising executive John Schneider III (1918-2009) has been credited with “making Boh synonymous with Baltimore.” He may also share part of the credit for making the name “Frank Hennessy” synonymous with Boh. It was Schneider who put Hennessy aboard a skipjack named “Chester Peake” and sent him “to every corner of Tidewater Maryland” as the “Roving Ambassador of the Chesapeake Bay.”
The sail of the 1915 skipjack was embroidered with the face of the iconic “Mr. Boh.”
Afro-American, August 1966
When Hennessy passed away in 2000, the Sun had many stories to share:
“Dubbed “Commodore of the Chesapeake” by Gov. Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, Hennessy was a familiar figure to Bay yachtsman as he cruised the Bay from the the C & D Canal to Smith Island, dressed in a snappy nautical cap, white duck pants and blue blazer.
“During the summer months we’ll be cruising the Chesapeake Bay, attending races, regattas and other special events, hoping that Chester Peake will serve as a graceful symbol of the wonderful Land of Pleasant Living,” [Hennessy] told The Sun.
Hennessy, an excellent outdoors cook who gained honors as the Male Barbecuing Champion at the national chicken grill-off in Selbyville, Del., was the creator of the Chesapeake BAYke.
“We have our wonderful crab feasts, oyster and bull roasts but there’s no identifying name like New England clambake or Hawaiian luau, and my wife and I got to thinking about a Chesapeake BAYke,” he told The Sun in an interview.
Firing up his gigantic Weber Big Smokey grill, Hennessy and his wife, Rita, whom he married in 1938, used such strictly local Maryland ingredients as rockfish, clams, oysters, blue crabs, corn and broiler chicken to create the feast.
Hennessy, who was born in St. Louis and reared in Memphis, always claimed one of his grilling secrets was using Arkansas swamp hickory chips.” – True Chesapeake Character, Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun, 2000
The concept of the somewhat-awkwardly-named Chesapeake BAYke provided Hennessy with more opportunities to promote Natty Boh in local newspapers.
He copyrighted the term in 1964.
In 1960, Hennessy took home the prize in the Barbeque division of the Delmarva Poultry Industry’s National Chicken Cooking Contest (more on that event can be found in this post). His recipe for a broiled and basted chicken features a not-so-secret addition. You guessed it.
I remember my own introduction to Boh. After watching a friend’s band at the Ottobar in the late 90s, we migrated to the bar upstairs. Someone asked what beer was the cheapest. “Natty Boh-boh!” was a friend’s lyrical reply. At a buck fifty, no one needed any further rationale for drinking National Bohemian.
A lot of Baltimoreans still carry the banner of Natty Boh from bars to backyard barbecues, despite the fact that the beer is now brewed in North Carolina and Georgia. It no longer costs a buck fifty, but neither does anything else. Nor are you likely to hear about raconteurs cruising the bay for the sole purpose of glorifying a beer. The unchanging label of Natty Boh remains a reminder of a time when Baltimore was a little bit cheaper and a little bit weirder.
Rita & Frank Hennessey in 1984, Baltimore Sun photo: Anne Kornreich. ebay.com
Recipe:
Recipe notes: I didn’t have straight up MSG so I used Sazón, a wonderful seasoning composed primarily of MSG. No regrets. I cooked the chicken in the middle of a ring of coals for even heat. Salt the chicken the day before. It’s called dry brining, get the net.
“In June 1948 an enthusiastic three-mile parade wended its way through the tiny town of Georgetown, Delaware, as the final event in the improbably named (to contemporary ears) “Del-Mar-Va Chicken of Tomorrow Festival.” The parade celebrated a remarkable event that had been building for several years – the national “Chicken of Tomorrow” contest…The winner, the Vantress Hatchery in California, was able to grow a heavier, meatier chicken faster than any other entrant.“ – Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation By Roger Horowitz
U.S. Rep. Bill Roth of Delaware (Delmarva Poultry Industry archives)
According to legend, the Delmarva poultry industry got its start due to a “shipping error,” in 1923 when Cecile Steele of Ocean View ordered 50 chicks and received 500, which she raised and sold around the region.
Raising chickens was nothing new to most households, for the same
reasons it is experiencing a resurgence now, but the Delmarva Poultry
Industry represents the modern era of breeding chickens for certain
traits, and industrial farming techniques.
Other facets of the Del-Mar-Va Chicken festival eventually became better known than the quest to breed a bigger bird. A pageant crowned the Del-Mar-Va chicken queen. The cooking contest was introduced in 1949 – Edna Karlik (1903 – 1987 ) from Salisbury, MD won that contest with her buttery, paprika-covered “Broiled Chicken Deluxe.”
The contest grew to attract cooks from all over the country. The annual cookbooks of contest winners are unique snapshots of what creative home cooks were doing. The combined 1949 & 1950 winners book includes standards such as fried chicken, barbeque, fricassee, and some adventurers using almonds. Paella, Indian Masala seasoning, and “Oriental Oven-Fried Chicken” placed in 1958. The 1971 book, from which I cooked “Pizza Chicken” demonstrates a contemporary pizza obsession, but also “exotic” sauces featuring pineapple, peppermint, grapefruit, and teriyaki.
Another famous highlight of the Chicken Festival was the gigantic frying pan. The 10-foot pan held 180 gallons of oil and used to fry 800 chicken quarters at a time for festival-atendees consumption. There is some debate over whether this pan was truly the world’s largest, but it remains the festival’s most famous attraction.
As the poultry industry’s star rose on the Delmarva Peninsula, the environmental effects could be devastating. Attempts to deal with the effects of this have been in and out of the news for decades.
The final DelMarVa Chicken Festival was held on June 21st, 2014. The Delmarva Poultry Industry felt the festival had run its course. The effort and investment put into promoting chicken awareness to the public was diverted towards furthering industry interests in political and legislative ways.
The decision may have paid off as Governor Hogan was elected soon after, shortly enacting regulations that the Delmarva Poultry Industry found favorable.
Chicken remains a popular choice for frugal Maryland meat-eaters. Many are now eschewing Delmarva chickens and turning to smaller farms (and eating smaller chickens.) Some are even taking it back to their own backyards with a sentiment that much like our fruits and vegetables and other food that was “improved” in the last century, the improvements may have come at too high a price.
Up until this year, the big public event of the MAryland (and DELaware, and VirginiA) poultry industry was the annual Delmarva Chicken festival.
According to the source:
“The National Chicken Cooking Contest was the first of the big national food contests having been started in 1949. Delmarva poultry industry people originated it as a highlight for the Delmarva Chicken Festival that year. It was devised as a replacement for a then ensuing national contest to develop a better breed of chicken.
In the early years, participants were just from the tri-state area. Later, the entire northeast.. became involved. Now, interest in the Contest has expanded until it has become an important chicken promotion for all broiler producing areas throughout the United States.”
“Pizza Chicken” represented Maryland in the 1971 cooking contest, whose winners by state were published in the annual booklet of recipes (also containing prize-winning recipes from previous contests.)
According to the bio of contestant Mrs. William R. Strieber aka Shirley, she “cooks to please her family” and combined their loves of pizza and chicken. Shirley is not a Maryland native; she was from Iowa, her husband a vet with the USDA. “Hobbies include cooking, reading, bicycling, gardening and bird-watching.” I wrote a letter to Shirley in AZ but she passed away on March 21, 2015. She was 88 years old.
This is 1971 but the booklet still has a pretty strong mid-century vibe. For the most part the cooks are self-described home-makers, although there are a few men and teens as well.
The pizza craze is reflected in a handful of other recipes, as is a lot of pineapple for “exotic appeal,” and a lot of smothering chicken in some special sauce and baking it.
Shirley did not take home the first prize – that honor went to Norma Young of Arkansas.
Still, the all-expenses-paid trip to Ocean City and the thrill of competition in an era before the bevy of miserable competitive cooking shows had to be a memorable experience.
Somewhere between 1950 and 1971, the requirement to use some Mazola Corn Oil was added. I used some other kind of oil.. I also used chicken breasts because a broiler-fryer seemed like a messy hassle to eat.
Recipe:
1 chicken, broiler-fryer
1 Teaspoon salt
.125 Teaspoon black pepper
.25 Cup Mazola corn oil
10.5 oz pizza sauce
1/3 Cup water
2 Tablespoon grated Parmesan Cheese
1 medium onion, sliced
1 green pepper, cut into rings
4 thin slices Mozzarella cheese
Sprinkle chicken pieces with salt and pepper. Heat oil in large skillet; add chicken and cook until brown on all sides. Place browned chicken in a medium shallow baking pan (about 13 x 9 x 2 inches). Combine pizza sauce, water and Parmesan cheese; pour over chicken. Add onion and green pepper rings. Cover and bake in 350°F (moderate) oven 45 minutes. Remove cover and place cheese slices on top. Return to oven for 15 minutes or until chicken is tender and cheese is melted. Makes 4 servings.
2014 was the last ever Delmarva Chicken Festival, but we will soon revisit the festival, their super-large gigantic frying pan, the booklets of chicken recipes, and other winners including a beloved Baltimore character.
Until then let us gaze upon fellow 1971 contestant Beverly Chiles, who represented her home state in cooking as well as in hairdo.
