It’s interesting to ponder the ways in which different political impulses and movements have had an effect on recipes.
For instance, did the “Women’s Club Movement” and the Progressive Era result in cookbooks that would otherwise have not been produced, and recipes that may not have otherwise been documented? Or would community cookbooks have been an inevitability, produced by churches, causes, and maybe just “because,” whether women wanted to change the world or not?
There is no way to know of course. I only know that there are many cookbooks made by women’s clubs or guilds around the state and that they began with the Progressive era of the 1890s and continued up through at least the 1980s. “Women’s Club Favorites,” made by the Women’s Club of Hagerstown in 1986 is one of my more recent cookbooks in this vein.
Before the internet and magazines boasted millions of novel (and disposable) recipes, newspapers were a valuable source for recipes that could become staples in a household. With that in mind, I’m hoping to source more entries from newspaper recipes.
This one was shared in 1939 in the Afro-American by Lillian Lottier, prominent Baltimorean, teacher, activist, and columnist for that paper.
Lottier’s “Royal Tropicaroma Cake” was first popularized in “The Royal Guide to Meal Planning” in 1929 as “Tropic Aroma” cake. I expected pineapples & bananas but this is actually more of a spice cake complimented with coffee and chocolate.
Lillian, born in 1881, was the daughter of Reverend Reuben Armstrong, who came to Baltimore from Harrisburg, PA to become pastor of historically black Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church from 1897 to 1904. According to the church’s website, the ministry of Armstrong was “riveted in the policies of black middle classness and intellectualism. [He] encouraged and sponsored ecumenical involvement, wholesome cooperation, and cultural activities – including forums and literary and musical programs.”
It was from this tradition that Lillian Lottier dedicated herself to a life of working for civil rights and social progress. In 1924, Lottier served as the first female president of the Baltimore NAACP. There she “led the Branch for only a single term but made a tremendous statement and mark on the Branch and the City of Baltimore.” She was a founding member of the Baltimore Urban League, and remained active with that organization as well as the Women’s Presbyterian Society.
“Her social activism gives an insight into the interest of female members of the NAACP. She was a long-time member of the United Protestant group in Baltimore that raised funds for inter-church meetings and charity work starting in 1933 and was executive officer by World War II. During the great depression Lottier was a member of National Negro Congress and was a publicity officer for its Baltimore branch, spearheading campaigns to end racial discrimination in employment, targeting large corporations such as Consolidated Gas, Electric Light, and Power Company [now BGE].” – Borders of Equality: The NAACP and the Baltimore Civil Rights Struggle, 1914-1970
Outside of her own column, Lillian Lottier merited frequent mentions in the Afro-American due to her active involvement in the PTA of several Baltimore schools. Her namesake daughter, Lillian Lottier Bolden (1918-2000) was an educator herself, who taught physically and mentally challenged students in Baltimore City.
“Teachers participated in a wide range of efforts to promote democracy, reform curricula, organize communities, and mentor young civil rights activists. Their engagement, both in the public sphere and behind the scenes, has shaped and influenced the Civil Rights Movement.” – Teachers in the Movement: A civil rights oral history project
Reading through Lottier’s columns in the Afro-American is a reminder of the diverse viewpoints among those working for civil rights. “Borders of Equality” described some of her activism with contraception as being “in the vein of the middle-class progressive urge of the era,” and some of Lottier’s views might not seem progressive those with a modern view of civil rights causes.
Nonetheless, her column is an interesting insight into the generation that laid the groundwork for the civil rights activism of the 1960s. In one spirited column she decries a preacher making a flirtatious “remark” to a parishioner. She passionately censures this affront to morality. Despite the amount of words dedicated to this outrage, the “remark” seems to be lost to time. I for one feel cheated.
“Now, she’s a person that puzzles me. I have often wondered whether she is a saint or a sinner. There are times when she seems pious enough to be a cardinal, and there are times when she seems to have a devil-may-care glint in her eye and a ‘Come-on, I-dare’ look in her face.” – 1930 Afro-American column about Lillian Lottier
1957
Lillian was married to George V. Lottier, a postal worker. Although he was involved with the YMCA and a writers group called the “Scribblers,” he does not appear to have been as outspoken as his wife. The family lived at 1509 Druid Hill Avenue in the Upton neighborhood.
“Even though this sex of ours has convincingly demonstrated our ability to compete successfully with men in almost every phase of life, there are still a few dull-witted, pig-headed, narrow-minded males left for whom we welcome additional proof.” – Lillian Lottier, 1926
The frequent Afro-American coverage of Lillian Lottier’s active life began to taper off in the 1950s. An avid-reader, she remained active in book clubs and celebrated milestones in the lives of her four children. In 1957 the Lottiers’ 50th anniversary is celebrated in the paper. Lillian passed away in 1976 with little fanfare. A Baltimore Sun obituary states that in addition to her four children, she was survived by twelve-grandchildren and fifteen great-grandchildren.
“At the best our gain in knowledge during a short life-time is but partial and limited, and it does seem a shame to waste any precious hours in willful blindness and self-deception.
Let it be our earnest desire… to do our feebly best to live fully, deeply, richly, and in accordance with the Creator’s wonderful purpose for mankind.” – Lillian Lottier, 1926
Recipe:
.75 Cup butter
1.25 Cup sugar
2 egg
2.5 Cup flour
4 Teaspoon baking powder
.25 Teaspoon salt
1 Teaspoon nutmeg
1 Teaspoon cinnamon
1 Cup milk
1 Tablespoon cocoa
1 Tablespoon boiling water
For icing:
2 Tablespoon butter
2 Cup sugar, powdered
1 Tablespoon cocoa
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon strong coffee
Cream butter; add sugar a little at a time followed by well beaten eggs, mixing thoroughly.
Sift flour, salt, baking powder and spices together. Add a little of the dry ingredients to the first mixture; slowly add milk followed by remaining dry ingredients.
Pour two-thirds of this batter into two greased and floured layer tins.
To remaining third of batter, add 1 tablespoon cocoa mixed with 1 tablespoon of boiling water. Use this batter for middle layer.
Bake layers at 375 F for 15-20 minutes. Put the filling and icing between layers and on top and sides of the cake.
Filling/Icing: Cream butter and add sugar and cocoa very slowly, beating until light and fluffy. Slowly add vanilla and coffee until soft enough to spread.
Recipe adapted from “Cake for a Postman,” Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, 1939
Mid-century food has been a running fascination/source of mockery since the early days of the internet. Even before the widespread popularization of organic, homegrown ingredients, people had largely turned away from the technicolor kitchen adventurism found in old recipe cards.
A few weeks ago there was a New York Times article addressing what I have referred to on this site as “mid-century peculiarities” about food and cooking.
“The women of the Women’s Education Association badly wanted the sacrosanct light of science to illuminate women’s work — done in the kitchen — with an emphasis on what was replicable, observable, gradable and expressive of human dominance over and mastery of nature. “ – Betty Crocker’s Absurd, Gorgeous Atomic-Age Creations by Tamar Adler, New York Times
The article generated a moderate amount of buzz. As far as I can tell, the real story lies somewhere between the grandiose claims and the somewhat joyless rebuttals.
Much like those two extremes, we often fall on similar “either/or” dichotomies when it comes to food in culture. “Local, fresh and organic” may fit the general modern notion of purity in food, but not too long ago ‘purity’ meant the exact opposite. The “suffocating sanitizing” actually dates back further than the age of Betty Crocker and it stemmed from a legitimate need to escape spoilage and contamination.
What gets lost in all of this is any kind of nuance or fluidity. Take my great-grandmother for instance; she fished, she farmed… and she made “Vanilla Butternut Cake.”
Tied to the cap of the bottle found in the cabinets of every member of my family is the recipe for this easy and delicious pound cake. While it may not have the panache of shrimp enshrined in green Jell-O or potato salad pressed into loaf form, the central ingredient in the cake is unmistakably from the past.
The origin story on the North Carolina-based Superior Flavors’ website makes little attempts to obscure their products’ lab-grown origins. The explanation is that the line of flavors were simply invented by chemist Jerry Fox in the 1930s for his wife Violet.
A few years ago my aunt took the effort to make sure our supplies were replenished, and for Christmas she gave each family member their own bottle of Superior “Vanilla, Butter & Nut” flavoring along with a copy of the recipe. She reminisced about my great-grandmother making this cake around the holidays, how heavenly it smelled, and she noted that one bottle might well last a lifetime.
In chef Sean Brock’s book “Heritage” he included a recipe for Velveeta fudge, wryly noting that for him, Velveeta was a ‘heritage ingredient.’ As it turns out, “Imitation Vanilla, Butter & Nut Flavoring” is a heritage ingredient for my family.
It was only when I began to write this entry that I came to realize that this cake recipe isn’t as ubiquitous as I’d assumed. The flavoring can’t be found in most grocery stores (although substitutes exist), and the origin of the recipe and even the company were hard to locate.
When I searched old newspapers for the pound cake recipe, Maryland had the most results. Even Superior Flavors’ home-state of North Carolina didn’t offer any clues.
The recipe was making the rounds here in Maryland papers in the 1970s, particularly Western Maryland, near where my Great Grandmother was from.
Two different people won the same cooking contest in different years with this cake, first in 1973 and then in 1977. The contest in question had the oh-so-challenging restriction that the recipes must contain… eggs.
Now that I know that “Vanilla Butternut Cake” isn’t as common as say, green-bean casserole, I will probably bake it more often. It lacks the glorious kitsch of neon aspics, and the spiritual gravitas of hand-preserved garden harvests, but it fits quite nicely into real life.
Recipe:
1.5 cups sugar
.25 cups Crisco
1 stick of butter
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1.5 cups flour
.5 cups evaporated milk
2 tsp vanilla-butter-nut flavoring
Cream together shortening, butter, sugar and salt. Beat in eggs one at a time. Alternately add in flour & milk, ending with flour. Fold in flavoring by hand. Pour into a greased tube or bundt pan. Place in cold oven, turn oven on to 325°. Bake for one hour & 45 minutes. Don’t peek! Remove from pan immediately.
★ I once made this cake using 1/3 coconut flour & adding extra milk (per coconut flour instructions) and it was excellent!
I know that we made much ado about tomatoes a few weeks back, but I actually did take a moment between tomato sandwiches to look forward to fall vegetables. They may not have the same glamour and prestige, but fall crops are comforting, dependable, and versatile.
The rainbow of cauliflowers are irresistible.
I never seem to tire of velvety, garlicky collards.
I can’t find a succinct sentence for the wide array of squashes and their uses.
My favorite fall food is another one that I can recall feeling passionate about from an early age: the sweet potato.
As of this writing, the Old Line Plate database contains 63 recipes where sweet potato is the main ingredient.
It is a shame then that only in the last few years did I become aware that sweet potatoes themselves come in a wide array of varieties and colors. Purple seems pretty exciting but I was most intrigued by a variety of sweet potatoes most commonly cultivated right here in Maryland.
1937 advertisement from Star-Democrat, Easton
I have seen them spelled as “White Hamon” and “White Hayman,” and there are claims that those are two different types altogether. I ordered some slips from Southern Exposure labeled “White Hamon (White Haymon),” sold as a “traditional heirloom of the Eastern Shore.”
They are described by one seller as “more starchy and less sugary than the orange varieties,” but an article about farmer Bill Jardine, of Quail Cove Farms in Machipongo, VA, claims the “Haymans” that he grows are “reputed to be the sweetest of all varieties.”
“The legendary Hayman is a 100-year-old white sweet potato that was once widely grown on the Eastern Shore. It’s a difficult crop with a low yield, so it’s not easy to find. Haymans, smaller than the other varieties tested, are tan and oddly shaped with bumps and raised areas of skin that look like raised veins on the back of someone’s hand. Inside, they are white like a russet potato. The flesh is denser than the others when baked and somewhat fibrous with a distinctly sweeter taste.” – Lorraine Eaton, The Virginian-Pilot, 2009
According to a 1999 article in the Baltimore Sun, just about everyone on the Eastern Shore loves White Hayman sweet potatoes. “It’s a mark of Thanksgiving,” said John Hickman, a native of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. “The Hayman was kept alive by people who liked the way it tasted.”
Hickman researched the potatoes, tracing them back as far as 1880, but didn’t pin down their exact origin or the source of the name.
A few years ago a Washington Post article asserted:
“In 1856, Capt. Daniel Hayman coaxed his ship, the Harriet Ryan, into the docks at Elizabeth City, N.C. He had sailed from the West Indies, and stowed in his holds were semitropical white sweet potatoes.
A Methodist minister hurried aboard and bought the lot of them, said David S. Shields, professor of Southern letters at the University of South Carolina, who researched the potato’s pedigree. The minister’s name has been lost, but the potatoes, dubbed Haymans, spread through the network of Methodist preachers. With Methodists dominant on the Eastern Shore, Haymans took hold.”
1877 blurb from North Carolina paper The Farmer and Mechanic
All of the articles about the potatoes mention their popularity and increasing distribution throughout the state.
Despite their increased popularity, it is possible that some of the white sweet potatoes being peddled in markets in Maryland are not in fact White Haymans.
I got mine at the Waverly Farmers Market, where they are still unknown enough that the seller made sure to inform me that I was buying a SWEET potato. The Virginian-Pilot article leads me to believe that the potato I bought may be an “O’Henry,” “another variety of white sweet potato that is easier and more economically feasible for farmers to grow.”
Regardless, I welcome the opportunity to taste all of the varieties of sweet potatoes available to me.
News stories about peculiarly-shaped sweet potatoes were once surprisingly common
I got this recipe from Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Cookbook. I’d asked a friend what kind of pie I should bring to his birthday and he said “white potato or sweet potato” so I thought I’d do some kind of clever switcheroo.
Ultimately this pie didn’t taste dramatically different from a white potato pie, so there wasn’t really any “gotcha” reveal but the pie was enjoyed by all.
Recipe:
2 large or 3 medium sweet potatoes
.5 Cup sugar
.25 Cup butter
1 pinch salt
3 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 Cup evaporated milk
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
.5 Cup milk
pie crust (graham cracker or vanilla wafer works nicely)
Boil sweet potatoes with their skins on, to “seal in” the sweetness. When cooled slightly, remove skins and mash until smooth. Cream together butter and sugar. Add sweet potatoes, salt, egg yolks, and cornstarch. Slowly add evaporated milk and vanilla. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff and fold into sweet potato mixture. Stir in whole milk. Pour into pie crust. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350° and bake for 25 minutes.
Makes two small 9″ pies or one large deep 9” pie. Extra filling can be baked as pudding.
Recipe adapted from “Mrs. Kitchings Smith Island Cookbook”
I made this pie twice this year. Once with very ripe fruit and once with the ripe
but firm and white flesh seen above. I strongly recommend the latter.
If you are lucky enough to find some farmed paw-paws then this pie will be a crowd-pleaser. Otherwise there is an admittedly disappointing (bitter) aspect to this recipe. This pie is delicious but you may pay the price when you get that bite with the lingering bitterness. (Note: some people aren’t as sensitive to this bitter taste. For me it is quite strong!)
At the 2015 Ohio Paw Paw festival I inquired to the growers association
representative as to why the paw paw pie I’d first made a few years ago had
these bitter spots. I had a few theories – the pulp close to the skin, the
heat from the custard, the stage of ripeness. She informed me, as had Andrew Moore in his OLP interview, that this is just the gamble we take with wild fruits.
This recipe is adapted from my favorite banana cream pie formula – the custard is lightly flavored with alcohol such as vanilla extract or bourbon, the fruit is laid under the custard and its strong flavor permeates the custard above.
I used Cherry Bounce for flavoring and the result was subtle but tasty.
This recipe marks the end of paw paw season on Old Line Plate. I will be tossing the seeds into the woods at Wyman Park so that one year some day maybe I won’t have to leave the city when I want to make this pie.
Recipe:
Vanilla Wafer Crust
1.75 cups crushed vanilla wafers
scant ½ cup of sugar
½ cup melted butter
Combine all ingredients and press into bottom and sides of a large pie dish. Bake at 375° for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Pie filling:
pulp from 1 or two large just ripe paw paw fruits
1/3 cup cornstarch
2/3 cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
3 cups milk, scalded
3 eggs, separated
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 tsp flavoring eg vanilla, rum, brandy
2 tb sugar
baked pastry shell
optional: 1 packet gelatin
Combine cornstarch, 2/3 cup of sugar and salt in a double boiler or suitable pot, mix well. If you want to serve this as a stiff chilled pie later, you can add some gelatin at this point.Otherwise, the pie has a pudding-like texture. Gradually add milk over medium heat, stirring or gently whisking constantly, just until thickened.
(When I want to add additional flavoring I put it in while the custard is cooking and add a small remaining amount later)
Beat egg yolks in a bowl, whisk in about ¼ of hot custard mixture and then add back to custard in double boiler. Cook until thickened and bubbly.
Remove from heat, stir in butter and flavoring.
Spread paw paw pulp over pie crust and cover with custard.
Beat egg whites (at room temperature) until soft peaks form, gradually add sugar until meringue is stiffened – spread over custard, sealing to edges of pan. Bake at 350° for 5 minutes or until meringue is lightly browned. Serve pie warm or chilled.
