There aren’t many recipes specifically for blackberry pie. Usually, older recipes for “berry pie” will specify that blackberries, blueberries, or raspberries can be used.
Blackberry pie has been a longtime favorite of mine. I grew up making them with my grandmother so I wanted to make one for her birthday in September. I have also been falling behind on blog posts so I searched the newspapers for ‘blackberry pie.’
The recipe was shared in the Afro-American in 1938 by Mrs. Ida Reid. Mrs. Reid said that she enjoyed housework – and blackberry pie – and that she was heavily involved in her husband G. B. Reid’s Washington, DC department store.
The store was a longtime fixture at 11th and U (often stylized as “You”) streets in Northwest DC.
Mrs. Ida Reid’s blackberry pie in the Afro-American women’s pages, 1938
Baltimore Peach Cake seems to be the bane of local recipe writers. By 1966, Evening Sun food columnist Virginia Roeder was exasperatedly telling readers “as for peach cake, I have published the recipe several times.” In 1958, she wrote about how she was bombarded each year with requests for peach cake recipes. Even Roeder’s predecessor, Eleanor Purcell, writing in racist dialect as “Aunt Priscilla” wrote in 1921 that she “done already gib a recipe fo’ peach cake.” (I’ve resolved to make a post addressing this ‘Aunt Priscilla’ elephant in the room before the year is out.) In 1991 the Sun reported that Baltimore Peach Cake was THE most requested recipe.
My own site analytics indicate that while no one has *asked* me for a recipe, plenty of people have done a search which led to my post. This has made me uncomfortable since that recipe was kind of a failure.
1914
I’m willing to bet that modern tested recipes are more reliable, but I thought I’d give it another shot (or two) nonetheless. This time around, I turned to Roeder’s recipe. The results were somewhat better, but I stuck with the regrettable 400° oven temperature – leaving my cake with a surface that was a little too tough. The Aunt Priscilla column was from a time before oven temperatures. In one version the top is dotted with butter. In another, it is topped with meringue after baking. Probably worth a try, frankly.
But again, when it comes to Baltimore Peach Cake, bakeries are considered the final word. The tradition is believed to have originated with the city’s German population. Advertisements in the early 1900s tempted diners to Brager’s Bakery with peach cake, iced tea and deviled crabs. Goetz’s bakery took out an ad announcing that the demand for their “celebrated peach cake” had exceeded supply in 1910. Would-be customers were encouraged to place their Saturday orders on Friday.
1964 Advertisement
In 1911 the prices of peaches went up and the Sun despaired that “Baltimore is writhing in the agony of a peach-cake famine.” Thereafter, the paper continued an annual tradition of singing the praises of peach cake. In 1913 they wrote “It is wonderful how much human enjoyment can be squeezed into the compass of one small piece of peach cake.” Another day that year, there was a snippet that read “Peach cake! ‘Nuff said.” In 1917 they called it “the universal peace-maker.”
Aside from Aunt Priscilla’s topping the cake with some butter, the glaze isn’t mentioned until the 1940s. Silber’s Bakery began to advertise its “sugar n spice glaze” in the 60s. Walter Uebersax of Fenwick Bakery told Sun writer Helen Henry that their caramel glaze was a “trade secret” in 1968.
By this time, Virginia Roeder has acquiesced to running her peach cake recipe annually. “No mention of peaches should be made without including the recipe for the famous Baltimore Peach Cake,” she wrote in 1969. “Requests for this recipe have led all others. Here it is once again.”
One Sun columnist who has never tired of writing about peach cake is Jacques Kelly. His occasional articles on peach cake are always a celebration, and a platform to advise against any cinnamon or glaze. “I think of this glazing as Formstoning what was once a simple and delicious product,” he wrote in 2010. I’m not sure that unglazed peach cakes are even offered by any of the small handful of peach-cake-selling bakeries within Baltimore City, however. Maybe we can compromise just a little, to keep this beloved tradition alive.
Recipe:
Peach Cake With Raised Sweet Dough Base
(Makes two 9-inch round cakes)
1 Cup lukewarm milk
.25 Cup sugar
1 Teaspoon salt
1 cake compressed yeast (2 ¼ tsp dry yeast)
1 egg
.25 Cup shortening
3.5 to 3.75 Cup flourMix together milk, sugar, salt and crumble into mixture, yeast. Stir until yeast is dissolved. Stir in egg and shortening. Mix in first with spoon, then with hands, half the flour, then the remainder of the flour. When the dough begins to leave the sides of the bowl, turn it out onto a lightly floured board and knead. Knead dough, then place in greased bowl, turning once to bring greased side up. Cover with damp cloth and let rise in warm, draft-free spot until double in bulk, about 1 ½ to 2 hours. Punch down, let rise again until almost double in bulk, 30 to 45 minutes. Divide dough in half.Pat dough into greased 9-inch round pan forming a ridge around the edge. Arrange thinly sliced peaches overlapping one another in a circle around the center. To keep peaches from darkening, sprinkle with lemon, orange or grapefruit juice. Cover and let rise until double, 25 to 35 minutes. Bake 25 to 30 minutes in 400-degree oven.
Quick Apricot Glaze:
Add 1 tablespoon hot water to 1/3 cup apricot jam.
Of all the casualties of the car-centric highway age of Baltimore, perhaps the reduction in neighborhood snowball stands looms the largest on sweaty summer strolls through town. The ice cream trucks are great but… just not the same.
When in 1977 the Baltimore Sun ran one of their many annual celebrations of the beloved summer treat, they estimated “perhaps 1000” snowball stands operating in the city – about one for every 822 people.
Although the 2012 SnoBaltimore map never claimed to be comprehensive – snowball stands these days are often ephemeral or hard to pin down – the number was closer to one snowball stand for every 4500 residents (locations in the county included due to my laziness.)
Aside from the lack of foot traffic necessary to do a bustling streetside trade in snowballs, sporadic health-code enforcements may have dampened business a bit. There were at least four stands within a square block of 25th and Greenmount, the Sun reported in 1977, and it was “a very profitable business.”
These days, snowballs may generate less profit, but certainly no less enthusiasm. The 1977 article continued a long tradition of venerating the snowball as a part of Baltimore summers. A search through the archive will confirm that at least the tradition of *writing* about snowballs is alive and well.
2018 seems to be the year of sweets for Old Line Plate. I haven’t had any complaints yet so I’ll keep going with that. For this simple (and delicious) recipe I reached for my trusty copy of “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland.”
Rose Hill Manor is just the kind of estate that EDBM author Frederick Phillip Stieff loved to rave about. Built in the Greek Revival style in the 1790s by Ann Jennings Johnson and her husband Major John Graeme, Rose Hill Manor is most famous for being the home of Ann’s father Thomas Johnson, who was the first governor of Maryland, from 1777-1779. The elder Johnson had been a friend and supporter of George Washington, had been involved in the planning of Washington D.C., and was a delegate in the Maryland Constitutional Convention. Some of the outbuildings at Rose Hill are still standing, including an icehouse, a smokehouse, and a laundry. In the 1970s, a log-cabin was moved to the property from elsewhere in the Frederick area. The slave-quarters are no longer standing but the Graemes and Johnson had all been slave-owners, and at least 30 people had been enslaved at Rose Hill.
Postcard, Rose Hill Manor Inn
Maryland Historical Trust documents about the property make sure to mention that George Washington did NOT visit Johnson there. Washington had died by the time Johnson moved in with his daughter, or else I am sure he would have visited Rose Hill, since that guy went everywhere.
From 1915 to about 1935, the manor was operating as an inn under the management of “The Misses Reynolds.” “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland” was published in 1932, and the five “Rose Hill Manor Inn” recipes included in the book are attributed to the Reynolds: “Brownies,” “Chicken Sago Soup,” “Ginger Pears,” “India Chutney Sauce,” and “Fried Chicken.”
I couldn’t find out very much about these Reynolds sisters. They came from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Lydia Jane (“L. Jane”) was the eldest, born in 1857, Clair was born in 1864. Their niece Agnes Rice was also involved in the operation of the business, as was a black servant named Bessie Ceaser. The census refers to the inn as a “Tea House,” perhaps because that was a common business for women to operate. After their inn-running adventure, the sisters returned to the Scranton area where they lived until the 1940s, Clair passing away in 1941 and L. Jane in 1948.
Rose Hill Manor is now a park and museum with an exhibit on the life of Governor Thomas Johnson, “as well as the history of agriculture and transportation in Frederick County.” They have a lot of programming geared toward children.
These brownies were excellent despite my not having an appropriate pan, and the center staying a little gooey. I used what I had on hand – some 74% baking wafers. I enjoyed them with friends and we wondered about the crusty tops. It turns out that is from the egg-whites and sugar – kind of a type of meringue. Now you know!
Even with the wet center and cutting the brownies like pie, the entire pan got eaten IMMEDIATELY. This leaves room on my kitchen counter for yet more desserts so stay tuned.
Recipes:
2 eggs
1 Cup sugar
.5 Cup flour
.5 Cup melted butter
2 oz chocolate
1 Cup nuts
Beat eggs and sugar together, then beat in flour, mixing well. Melt butter & chocolate & beat into eggs. Stir in nuts. Bake for about 20 minutes at 400°.
Beat eggs and sugar together, then beat in flour, mixing well. Melt butter & chocolate & beat into eggs. Stir in nuts. Bake for about 20 minutes at 400°.
Old black & white photographs of the ports of Baltimore bring to mind a gritty and sooty place; smog and ship steam and oyster shells. It is harder to imagine the loads of colorful & sometimes fragrant cargo coming into the port: tomatoes, bananas, coffee, citrus fruits. Much of it was headed to the city’s many canneries.
From April through July in the 1800s, the ports could expect thousands and thousands of pineapples shipped from the Bahamas. If the pineapples arrived ripened, they were shipped off to one of the dozens of packing houses. If they had gone bad, they were unceremoniously dumped into the harbor.
Baltimore saw lots of trade and plenty of fruit importation, but the pineapple fleet was greeted with “color and ceremony,” according to a 1940 Baltimore Sun reminiscence by Dean Wanamaker. “After a winter on the Chesapeake Bay, captains cleaned, painted and generally refurbished their ships… They tried to outdo one another. Coming into the harbor, they would fly all the flags and buntings they could get aloft.”
1842 Advertisement, Baltimore Sun
The schooners docked along Pratt Street and the packing houses would sound whistles to their workers to retrieve the cargo.
Baltimore was the primary touchdown point for pineapples from the Bahamas, the industry peaking around 1900, with millions of pineapples processed and millions of dollars made (adjusted for inflation).
These Bahamian pineapples were not the first pineapples that Baltimore had ever seen. Before the American Revolution, Charles Carroll the Barrister had an indentured convict gardener named John Adam Smith to oversee his Pinery. A visitor from Jamestown in 1770 wrote that Carroll’s pinery was expecting a yield of 100 “Pine Apples” the next summer. Attempts to grow the popular status symbol fruit were not uncommon at the time. Typically, manure would be piled around the rows of pineapples to emit heat during the colder months.
Carroll’s gardener absconded, as evidenced by a 1773 advertisement in the Maryland Gazette: “TEN POUNDS REWARD…Ran away…a convict servant man, named John Adam Smith…by trade a Gardener, has with him…a treatise on raising the pine-apple, which he pretends is of his own writing, talks much of his trade and loves liquor.” Perhaps this was the end of pineapple farming in Baltimore.
This recipe comes from “Wine and Dine with The Lake Roland Garden Club,” a 1935 book full of cocktails, canapés, and wine advice, plus the usual assortment of community cookbook recipes for cakes and weeknight dinners (or, as they called it in the Roland Park Garden Club, dinner “for the maid’s night off.”)
The recipe for Pineapple Ice Box Cake doesn’t have a contributor name, but I traced it to a 1933 Knox Gelatine recipe book. The Lake Roland Garden Club cookbook committee tastefully removed the brand name from the ingredients list, but other than that the wording is identical.
Icebox cakes developed in the early 1900s along with the increased popularity of… you guessed it, iceboxes. Originally they were made with a cooked custard containing eggs, but gelatin manufacturers were happy to step in and simplify the process. The Pineapple Icebox Cake is a match made in branding heaven: by this time, pineapple branding was in full force, but consumers were not reaching for canned pineapple from Baltimore.
Hawaii was taken as a U.S. Territory in 1898, and in 1900, Sanford Dole, who had been serving as “President,” became the territorial governor. Sanford’s cousin Edmund Pearson Dole came to Hawaii and parlayed his connections there to eventually build a canning empire. With the canneries close to the pineapple fields, and a low-paid immigrant workforce, canned pineapple became more cheap than ever. Dole’s branding of Hawaiian pineapples made them into an American staple.
Baltimore could not compete. One by one the Baltimore pineapple canneries closed. Wannamaker wrote that by 1940 “only a handful of shippers and packers remember[ed] that Baltimore was once the greatest pineapple center in the world.”
Recipe:
1 envelope gelatin
.25 Cup sugar
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
.25 Teaspoons salt
.25 Cup cold water
1 Cup canned crushed pineapple
lady fingers or stale sponge cake
.75 Cup whipped cream or evaporated milk
Pour cold water in bowl and sprinkle gelatine on top of water. Place bowl over hot water and stir until dissolved. Add pineapple, sugar, salt, and lemon juice. Cool, and when it begins to thicken, beat, and fold in whipped cream or whipped evaporated milk. Line sides and bottom of square or round mold with lady fingers (any stale cake may be used). Cover with pineapple cream mixture, then alternate cakes and cream until mold is filled. Place in refrigerator for three or four hours. To serve, unmould on cake place and garnish with whipped cream and strawberries in season. Fresh or canned strawberries, raspberries or peaches, or any preffered fruit may be used instead of the pineapple. Mosre sugar will be needed for fresh fruit.
Recipe from “Wine and Dine with the Lake Roland Garden Club,” 1935
