Definition of olio 2a: a miscellaneous mixture : HODGEPODGE — Merriam-Webster
It didn’t take too many years of research for me to come to the disappointing realization that a lot of the romantic notions I’d held about recipes were simply not true. “Recipes” are not exact formulas. They can never really live up to the promise of conjuring up an exact place or time. Authenticity is a nebulous and possibly meaningless concept. Few recipes are truly as regional as we’d like to believe. Even fewer recipes were “invented” by any one cook or chef in some inspired moment.
Take the iconic crab cake: the ultimate ‘Maryland’ food. When I search for crab cakes in pre-1900s newspapers I find menu listings and recipes from Pennsylvania, California, New York, Texas, Kentucky… and more.
Other favorite recipes originated as corporate promotions, taking on a life of their own in the hands of home cooks until their unexciting origins become obscured.
I’ve come to accept all of this and I’ve largely dispensed with hierarchies of recipe value and validity.
Having said all that, how do I feel when I find a unique recipe, so unmistakably Maryland, created by a cook and spread organically by word of mouth? Pretty intrigued.
In “Domestic Cookery”, Elizabeth Ellicott Lea suggests a hearty Irish Stew of mutton chops with onions, potatoes, black pepper and mushroom catsup for extra umami. (No, she did not use that word but that’s what it’s there for!) “A slice of ham is a nice addition,” she wrote.
“Queen of the Kitchen” author Mary Lloyd Tyson added “a cup of rich milk or cream” to her Irish Stew of Mutton. Sounds good to me!
Instead of indulging that route, I decided to reckon with a dish from my youth that I was never on very good terms with: Corned Beef and Cabbage.
The Pennsylvania Gazette, 1737
In Ireland, Corned Beef is considered more of a Christmas dish, and beef in general has historically been less popular there than it is here. But this isn’t an Irish food blog, it’s a Maryland food blog, and Marylanders have probably been consuming “Irish Beef” since European colonization. The semi-preserved beef was favored for its ability to survive the journey across the Atlantic.
The first digitized newspaper mention that I found of “Irish Beef” is in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737. The fact that it is “sold by the barrel” makes it apparent that this beef was corned beef.
According to “Irish-American Trade, 1660-1783,” by Thomas M. Truxes, Irish beef was readily available in most mainland ports in small casks “fit for family use.” This is likely meant in contrast to the portion used as provisions on the weeks at sea… maybe less appetizing to non-sailors.
Domestic colonial beef was “considered second-rate by comparison” at the time.
As the young nation began to sprawl westward, it made more and more sense to produce beef domestically. Interestingly, some of the first American recipes for what we might recognize as corned beef were printed in Maryland.
Although the method of curing beef with salt and nitrates and seasoning with cloves, mace, and allspice is ancient, Mary Randolph didn’t include such a recipe in her book. She only included a recipe for corning beef in hot weather (no spices mentioned, but she did include molasses.)
Before that, Eliza Leslie described brining and spicing the meat – but goes on to smoke the beef. Amelia Simmons stuck to more of an ‘á la mode’ dish in her slim 1796 cookbook.
As it turns out, neither of these recipes even contains cabbage. Instead, the beef is served with carrots and turnips and a buttery sauce made with some of the cooking gravy.
This was a very gradual way for me to come to terms with Corned Beef and Cabbage… because there was no cabbage. The problem is that cabbage can be so easily overwhelmed by the power of corned beef. But curing and seasoning the meat yourself gives you more power over the end result. Newer recipes include mustard seeds and garlic, which sounds inviting. Undertaking the process of spicing the beef helped me get an appreciation of the flavors – and the possibilities.
Recipe:
Recipe from “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen” by Mrs. B. C. Howard
What I did, more or less:
Most recipes say to use brisket. I bought a way cheaper cut of beef because I’m not Rockefeller over here. Rubbed it with brown sugar and pink curing salt (this contains
sodium nitrite not
potassium nitrate but I had it on hand) and sat overnight. The next day, added crushed up black pepper, cloves, allspice, and on a whim some bay leaves. Turned once a day for the next 7 days.
Cooked the meat for 8 hours in a slow cooker.
Boiled the vegetables and cooked in a generous amount of butter plus some of the beef-cooking broth, strained. Then thickened it a little to serve.
“If the Tomato be as highly medicinal as it has been represented, it may be anticipated that this wine will find favor with the public.” – Milwaukee Sentinal, June 1840
Interspersed with the shrubs, the cherry bounce, eggnog and Fish House Punch in 19th-century Maryland cookbooks are some of the most intriguing and intimidating recipes: for wines and beers.
Brewing was a part of everyday household management, hardly considered any more frivolous than bread. (And the two processes were often intertwined.)
Beer appeared in the first American cookbook, “American Cookery”, by Amelia Simmons in 1796. Cider was fairly easy to make from fruits like apples and pears. Wine was a little more complicated.
European grapes didn’t always fare so well in America, and the native ones didn’t always make wine that was considered palatable. (Don’t worry – we’ll revisit that topic later this summer…)
In an 1790, the Maryland Gazette reported that a New Jersey man, Joseph Cooper, Esq., could make the elusive “excellent American wine” from honey and cider. Cooper believed that “by using the clean honey instead of the comb… such an improvement might be made as would enable the citizens of the United States to supply themselves with a truly federal and wholesome wine.”
It was the increased availability of sugar in the 1800′s that really fueled a century of creative wine brewing.
According to Waverley Root and Richard De Rochemont in “Eating in America,” “every housewife knew how to make ‘weed wines’ fermented from “any product of field or garden” – dandelion, elderflower, spinach, tomato, mint, “and of course berries.”
“Early American Beverages,” by John Hull Brown reprinted recipes for a staggering variety of wines that could be found in 19th-century America, including apricot, birch, egg, ginger, lemon, sage, turnip and walnut leaf.
Tomatoes were really taking off in popularity around this time. Whether or not colonists or Europeans had previously suspected tomatoes of being poisonous, in the early 1800′s, the opposite was true.
The idea of tomatoes being a panacea is attributed to a Dr. John Cook Bennett, who publicized tomatoes as a cure for dyspepsia, Cholera, and liver problems among other things. Bennett promoted recipes for tomato pickles, sauces, and ketchup. Manufacturers of cure-all pills and tonics capitalized on the craze by peddling tomato extract pills (which may or may not have contained any trace of tomatoes.)
Newspaper advertisements in the 1830s and 1840s offered a variety of brands of tomato pills guaranteed to cure “all diseases of the blood.”
Tomato wine experienced a surge in popularity in tandem with this. The recipe was popularized in the widely circulated “Dr. Chase’s Recipes” publication alongside fruit wines, remedies, animal husbandry and other information. Tomato wine appeared in regional newspapers as well – including the Baltimore Sun in 1856. Some recipes promised to “retain the well-known properties of the fruit.” Others claimed the resulting drink resembled Champagne or Madeira.
In 1865, “The American Agriculturalist” had had enough. In a scathing and humorous editorial, they praised the tomato as food while dismissing the medicinal claims:
“The following precious nonsense is going the rounds of the agricultural and other papers: ’ A good medical authority ascribes to the tomato… important medical qualifications… the tomato is one of the most powerful aperients of the liver and other organs… it is one of the most effective and the least harmful medical agents known… a chemical extract will be obtained from it that will supersede the use of calomel in the cure of diseases”…
This we regard as.. a libel upon our good friend the tomato. No ‘good medical authority’ ever wrote himself down such a stupid as to accuse the tomato-vine of being an apothecary’s shop… Just think of what a condition our livers must be in at the close of tomato season, after being so powerfully ‘aperiented’ to say nothing of the ‘other organs.’ The whole thing savors of the most arrogant quackery.
The tomato extract dodge was tried years ago, and we had “Tomato pills, will cure all ills,” as the quack epidemic for its day. Let no lover of the delicious tomato be deterred from enjoying it for fear of taking anything bearing the slightest resemblance to calomel or any other medicine, but eat as many as he likes without thinking of his liver or the doctor.“ – The American Agriculturist, Volume 24, 1865
In the chapter of “Southern Provisions” about sugar, David Shields discussed the historic variety of American wines. “Since the 1930′s, the superiority of wine made from Vitis Vinifera grapes has been maintained so insistently in culinary circles that the splendors of tomato wine, rhubarb wine, and strawberry wine have been discounted.”
It is true that when word got out about my tomato winemaking venture to friends-of-friends in Napa, eyebrows were raised. I think it’s a little unfair to hold this endeavor as a litmus test to whether tomato wine is worthy of revival. My brewing experience before this was limited to ginger ale, after all.
Furthermore, I’m not the biggest fan of white wine – which is tomato wine’s closest comparison point. I drank a glass and enjoyed it as much as any other white wine. Then I promptly introduced the vinegar mother.
In addition to the lost wines, Shields lamented “we have lost not only the beverages, but a world of early pickles that employed vinegar made from fruit and berry wines.” So it’s not all a lost cause.
There is some tomato wine available on the market today. For that matter, there are tomato pills available on the market today. If you have cholera or liver problems, you should probably just stick to water.
This is another entry laden with tedious detective work, my unrestrained fanaticism ruining any possibility of ever attracting repeat readers.
I’ll try to keep it brief.
According to “The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle“, 1987, “famed Baltimore hostess, Mrs. B.C. Howard, compiled the earliest charity cookbook published in Maryland, Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen’(Baltimore, 1873).” Certainly, “50 years” is one of the more famous and important of Maryland cookbooks.
A few months ago, in my quest to print-on-demand every Maryland cookbook in the public domain, I found a lesser-known Maryland cookbook entitled “Queen of the Kitchen,” written by a mysterious “Miss Tyson” or “M. L. Tyson” in 1870. The name of course resonated but Tyson is no Paca, Howard or even Pratt – not as unquestionably Maryland upper-crust.
“Queen of the Kitchen” certainly disseminated around Maryland. Some of the recipes in “Maryland’s Way” came from different Marylanders’ personal copies of the book.
When I began to enter the recipes into my database I noticed something – many of the recipes were strikingly similar to recipes in “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen.” Copying recipes into new cookbooks hardly qualified as plagiarism at the time. It was rampant. Still, it is pretty interesting to see the source of so many recipes from Mrs. B.C. Howard’s book!
Howard may have owned a copy of the book, or she may have known Tyson and they both sourced the recipes from common friends or from each-other.
So… who was M. L. Tyson?
Apparently “Queen of the Kitchen” was a cookbook by a Baltimore woman, published to raise money to build an Episcopal church in Oakland Maryland. Kind of random but… ok.
By researching the church I was able to determine that M.L. Tyson was Mary Lloyd Tyson, born in 1843. And she was indeed Maryland upper-crust. Mary Tyson’s mother was none other than Rebecca Ann Key, cousin of Francis Scott Key. Her father, physician and planner Alexander H. Tyson was Rebecca’s second husband. According to accounts, Rebecca Ann Key was a stunning woman.
“What was she, you will ask—she was no Queen or Goddess—she represented
no character in Shakespeare—neither was she attired in any costume as a
princess—she was herself only and as herself dressed in some white
material familiar to you ladies, but unknown to me. She paraded through
those rooms—crowded with all the beauty of this city of beauties—the
acknowledged Queen of the Night—not that she received more attention,
but she elicited the most admiration.” – “Some Account of Mr. and Mrs. Cohen’s Fancy Ball,” MDHS Underbelly blog
It’s agonized me that I could not find her portrait.
Dr. William Howard’s home, Charles and Franklin Street, (loc.gov)
So anyway, Rebecca’s FIRST husband was William Howard. William was Benjamin Howard’s brother. Basically, Mrs. B.C. Howard and M.L. Tyson were related, and certainly knew one-another.
What’s more, Mary Tyson’s half brother, William Key Howard, married a woman named Clara Haxall Randolph in 1860. Clara was Mary Randolph’s niece. How about that!
There’s a few other asides. Pretty much all of the people involved were Confederate sympathizers – William Key served in the war. Here is his picture:
Mary’s younger sister Nannie married an actor named Robert Lee Keeling. He was twenty years younger than her. Future mayor James H. Preston (I made his corn pone) was an usher at their wedding. The marriage quickly soured. Robert Lee Keeling went on to become a celebrated painter of miniature portraits.
When “Queen of the Kitchen” was published, Mary Lloyd Tyson was a single woman of 27. She was likely not the female head of her household as her mother was still alive. (As opposed to Mrs. B.C. Howard who was 72 when her book was published.)
I think the Tyson’s lived here, on the 500 block of Park Avenue (loc.gov)
Mary Tyson became Mrs. George Tucker in 1875. The Tuckers resided in Virginia. Both Rebecca Ann Key and Mary’s sister Nannie spent their final days there, and Mary herself passed away in 1908.
I made Tyson’s macaroons – what would today be called ‘macarons’. This is not one of the recipes that Howard reprinted, although she did use a second macaroon recipe, with slight adjustments. The Tysons lived in Baltimore city, not far from Belvidere at all. Especially considering that M.L. Tyson was not the head of her household at the time of the books publication, the families might have shared receipts.
I don’t have a good way to finish this post but if you’ve made it this far, what does it matter? These cookies were delicious for the record.
