After falling in love with Rose Geranium Cake, I felt I had to try the other rose geranium recipe in my database. This jelly uses the pectin from apples and gets a light flavor from the geranium leaf. The small green apples I picked from a neighborhood tree worked great for this.
This recipe comes from the “Maryland’s Way: The Hammond-Harwood House Cookbook,” where it is one of many recipes attributed to “Miss Fanny.” For years I’ve been wondering about this – who was she? Who better to ask than a food historian who also happens to be vice president of the board of trustees of Hammond-Harwood House: Joyce White.
Joyce has been working on a project called the Great Maryland Recipe Hunt, aimed at preserving our modern culinary heritage. I figured I would also ask about how that has been going.
Do you happen to know the identity of the “Miss Fanny” of “Miss Fanny’s Receipt Book” that appears throughout Maryland’s Way?
I believe (but have not been able to confirm) that she might actually be Frances Loockerman who lived in Hammond-Harwood House from 1811 to the 1850s. Before she was married she was known as Fanny Chase, so recipes in which the “Miss Fanny” title is mentioned in Miss Ann Chase’s account book and in the Harwood papers points in this direction. She was Judge Jeremiah Townley Chase’s daughter and married Richard Loockerman. Judge Chase bought Hammond-Harwood House for them and remained the owner because he was afraid Richard might gamble the house away and leave his daughter homeless.
The 725 recipes in “Maryland’s Way” were gathered from a variety of manuscripts and old cookbooks as well as from personal recipe collections of friends and colleagues of Mrs. Frances Kelly and Mrs. Hope Andrews (which is why they are concentrated in Anne Arundel County). Many of the recipes were adapted and adjusted by Alice Brown.
I’ve been able to determine the origin of most of the documents mentioned in Maryland’s Way – items kept in the Maryland Historical Society Library or Maryland State Archives. There are still a few that stump me – not to mention the identity of the various mononymously credited servants or relatives mentioned alongside the recipes.
This map attaches the book’s recipes to the manors and locations mentioned. When none is given, I defaulted to the main home of person who is listed alongside the recipe.
These maps are less an indication of any type of geographic culinary trends and more just a fun visualization of the culinary legacies of Maryland’s elite families at the turn of the 20th century.
A lot of the names alongside the recipes in “Maryland’s Way” are associated with the Navy. This makes sense since the Hammond-Harwood house is in Annapolis, but it is interesting to see the different families that came to this region because of the Naval Academy and ultimately became lifelong Marylanders.
Frank Jack Fletcher was an Admiral during World War II, a commanding officer during World War I, and a lieutenant at the battle of Vera Cruz – part of the U.S. involvement in the Mexican Revolution.
That’s a lot of wars. According to Naval History magazine, he got a bum rap. I don’t know what his rap is, bum or otherwise, and I doubt he was too involved with this chicken recipe, what with all of his travels, so I’ll leave it at that.
Mrs. Frank Jack Fletcher was Martha Richards from Missouri; her family owned a hardware store in Kansas City. It’s unclear how the two met, but they were married in a rush in 1917 due to the United States entering the First World War.
In the 1930’s, the Fletchers purchased the historic Araby estate in Charles County. The house at Araby was originally built in the mid-1700s, and updated in the mid-1800s. The family of Colonel William Eilbeck owned the estate, and it is said that their only daughter Sarah once resided there with her husband George Mason. George Washington’s diaries mention frequent visits to Araby.
Historic pancake recipes tend to refer to something more like crepes than the pancakes we currently know. Illustrations in the Mrs. Beeton books show the thin pancakes rolled and stacked; they could be filled with sweet or savory fillings.
The basic recipe for these chicken filled pancakes makes frequent appearances in the Aunt Priscilla column in the Baltimore Sun. With slight variations, it was printed in 1926, 1936 and 1943. The recipe that Mrs. Fletcher contributed to “Maryland’s Way” does not specify whether the chicken should be cooked, but cooked chicken is used in the Priscilla columns, sometimes suggested as a way to use up leftovers. I cooked the chicken first just to be safe.
While it is highly possible that Mrs. Fletcher encountered the recipe through the newspaper or somewhere else, it may be worth noting that in the 1940 census, she had a black servant named Theodore Hawkins. Frank Jack Fletcher was away on duty at that time, so Hawkins may have been hired to assist with things that the Admiral wasn’t available for. However, ten years earlier, Hawkins had been employed at a hotel or kitchen at a Naval site in Indian Head Maryland, under a cook named Daisy Taylor. As the appearances in Aunt Priscilla indicate, the creamy chicken pancakes were the kind of food expected under hotel chefs and caterers of Maryland. The recipe may have reached Mrs. Fletcher through her servant whom the family may have met at Indian Head (now Naval Surface Warfare Center). We can never know these things for sure but recipe genealogy is intriguing.
Frank Jack Fletcher survived all of the wars he served in, and died in 1973, with Mrs. Fletcher passing away just over a year later. Both are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Recipe:
.5 Lb mushroom
3 Tablespoon butter
2 tb grated onion or shallot
2 white onions
1 Cup finely ground chicken
1 Cup cream
salt
pepper, black
cream sauce
cheese, Parmesan
Chop mushrooms fine and sauté in 1 tablespoon butter with grated onion. Brown sliced white onions in 2 tablespoons butter, then remove onions with slotted spoon and save for another dish. Sprinkle chicken with flour and stir it into onion seasoned butter. Add mushrooms and cook gently for about two minutes. Add cream, salt and pepper to taste, and cook for a minute or two longer. Spread the chicken on crepes (recipe below) and roll up. Arrange them in an oven dish, cover with cream sauce, sprinkle with cheese and bake at 350° for 5-10 minutes, until just browned.
Crepes:
1 Cup flour
1 whole egg plus 2 yolks
pinch salt
2 Cups milk
2 Tablespoons melted butter
Sift together flour and salt. Break egg into center; add 2 yolks. Pour in a little milk and milk with a fork until smooth. Gradually whisk in the rest of the milk; beat in butter. Cover batter and let rest for 2 hours. Batter should be the consistency of whipping cream. If it is too thick, whisk in more milk. Batter should be the consistency of whipping cream. If it is too thick, whisk in more milk.
To cook, melt additional butter in a pourable container. Heat a skillet and pour in a little butter. Turn skillet so that butter covers bottom and sides. When hot, ladle just enough batter to cover the bottom. Cook until lightly browned on each side.butter covers bottom and sides. When hot, ladle just enough batter to cover the bottom. Cook until lightly browned on each side.
Recipes adapted from “Maryland’s Way: The Hammond-Harwood House Cookbook”
“An old almanac in the Goschenhoppen Folklife Library contains a woodcut showing a farm boy with a baseball-bat size club whacking away at a walnut tree. The late Thomas R. Brendle records the practice of waking-up young fruit and nut trees that are reluctant to start bearing by beating them with club. The folk practice dictates that the trees were to be beaten on New Year’s Day in the morning without speaking. A current arborist write that this is not complete nonsense. Apparently if a young apple tree, for example, has reached the age when it should start to bear and it just doesn’t flower, during the winter when it is dormant a beating with a padded club and a vigorous twisting of the limbs traumatizes and shocks the tree into its normal cycle.” – The Historian: Black walnuts in local culture, Berks-Mont News
A search of early era newspapers for “Black Walnut” turns up a lot of talk about furniture. And this may be what the trees are primarily known for today. But today, foragers know that the smelly, stain-causing green projectiles launched from black walnut trees contain a tasty little treasure for those willing to do the work to get them out.
It is actually surprising that black walnuts didn’t catch on sooner with Euro-Americans, because their flavor is very floral and perfumey – fitting in well with the rose or orange flower water flavorings that were common in desserts of the era. But with Chesapeake abundance, it could be easy to overlook such tough nut to crack. I harvested some black walnuts last year, dried them out, and had Burgersub drive over them with his car, but they came out too pulverized for use. Mom says that my grandmother smashes them with a hammer – but then she has smaller more nimble hands for picking the nutmeats out of the walnut chambers. This year, I bought them at the farmer’s market, conveniently shelled and ready for use.
Black walnuts were widely consumed by Native Americans, and the practical Pennsylvania Dutch (and their Maryland counterparts) have long used the nuts and the trees’ wood. One Pennsylvania writer has said that Black Walnut Cake was a Thanksgiving tradition in his family.
Elizabeth Ellicott Lea’s Black Walnut notes, “Domestic Cookery,” 1859
Many older Maryland recipes for Black Walnut Cake resemble a pound cake, but I chose a lighter cake from “Maryland’s Way,” contributed by a Ruby Duval of Annapolis (1891-1976). This cake contains baking powder, and uses only the beaten whites of the eggs. Food writer Clementine Paddleford wrote of a similar recipe, hailing from Kansas, in 1952.
I recently learned from “Maryland’s Chesapeake” by Neal and Kathy Wielech Patterson that The Maryland Department of Natural Resources sometimes collects donated bushels of black walnuts in order to grow them into seedlings to be planted along streams. This program, called “Stream ReLeaf,” plants native trees to curb erosion and runoff – ultimately resulting in a healthier and cleaner Chesapeake Bay. If you’ve ever seen the piles and piles of nuts dropped by a black walnut when it’s having an abundant year, you may be reassured that you can have this cake and a clean bay too. Ugh, nevermind, just eat some cake and watch out for the shells because you can break a tooth.
Recipe:
1 Cup butter
2 Cup sugar
3 Cup flour
2 Teaspoon baking powder
1 Cup milk
1 Cup black walnut meats
5 egg whites
Powdered sugar
almond extract or other flavoring
Preheat oven to 350°.
Cream butter, gradually beat in sugar, mixing until smooth and fluffy. Sift together flour and baking powder. Gradually add flour and milk to creamed butter/sugar, alternating, beginning and ending with flour. Gently fold in beaten egg whites and walnut meats, keeping light but mixing thoroughly. Pour into bundt pan that has been greased and floured; bake for 45 minutes or until lightly browned.
Wet powdered sugar with almond flavoring and/or water and mix until smooth. Spread over cake while it is still slightly warm.
Recipe adapted from Maryland’s Way: The Hammond-Harwood House Cookbook
Note: there is some further important background on this book found in this post.
A lot of my recent recipes have come from “Maryland’s Way”, the Hammond-Harwood House cookbook, and that is because I am having a bit of a rekindled romance with this book.
When I originally started an “Old Line Plate” blog in 2010 this was my main recipe source. In the years since I’ve come across so many great Maryland cookbooks such as “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland” and “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen” as well as less sweeping books presented by everyone from small churches to local television chefs to the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company. I guess after spending some time with these other books I have come to have a greater understanding of what a treasure “Maryland’s Way” truly is.
Inside cover, “Maryland’s Way”
“Treasure” is the first word that comes to my own mind but an article written by the former director of the Hammond-Harwood House, Carter Lively* refers to it as a “masterpiece” which is every bit as fitting.
On first glance you might assume this cookbook is similar to a church fundraising cookbook with recipe contributions contributed by members. But then the attributions reveal something more: Baked Seafood in Shells.. Mrs. William W. Paca; Mrs. Virgil Maxcy’s Fried Chickens.. original receipt 1815; Chestnut Stuffing.. Mrs. Dorsey’s receipt 1855; Charles, Talbot, Annapolis, Chestertown, Wye River..
“Maryland’s Way” is no ordinary community cookbook. It is a collection of historical documents, compiled in a gargantuan effort and preserved for posterity.
“Mrs. Hope Andrews of Tulip Hill, who was serving as the President of the Hammond-Harwood House Association, and her close friend and fellow trustee Mrs. Frances Kelly decided they needed to raise funds for the Hammond-Harwood House museum by producing and selling a cookbook which would incorporate the culinary traditions of Maryland’s historic past.
They started testing recipes and reading old manuscripts in 1958 and after five years of hard work they produced a masterpiece of 372 pages filled with classic photographs by Aubrey Bodine and Marion Warren and over 700 traditional recipes springing from historic 18th and 19th-century Maryland cook’s notes, diaries, and recipe books.” – A Historic Cookbook, Carter Lively, 2013
For a mid-century cookbook, it’s quite ahead of its time. I have not really done any digging into the food histories in other states but one wonders if they should all be so lucky.
Just in case I haven’t done enough gushing over the book, another thing about it is striking to me. For a fund-raising cookbook from the 1960s, “Maryland’s Way” is beautifully designed. If it weren’t for the yellowed pages on my copy, it would be hard to estimate a publication date. For a benefit cookbook, the illustrations, photo usage and layout are strikingly cohesive and thoughtful.
“Maryland’s Way” was published to raise funds for the Hammond-Harwood House, but it actually made me aware of the house’s very existence. This 1774 architect’s delight is full of paintings by Charles Wilson Peale, host to a unique variety of interactive educational events, as well as the usual tours of the house itself. Since it is right downtown in Annapolis it makes for a nice day-trip, perhaps alongside a stop in the nearby Paca House, and if you’re like me… a look at the place where William Faris’ garden once stood.
Sadly I can’t make it to Annapolis more often. However, my copy of “Maryland’s Way” is never very far from my reach when I feel the urge to browse some more Maryland history.
*A big thanks to Rachel Lovett, Assistant Director & Curator at the
Hammond-Harwood house for furnishing me with this document
