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?
Continue reading “Rose Geranium Jelly, Miss Fanny’s Receipt Book”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.