Many home cooks dream of achieving what Emily Frances Kitching did. Kitching’s Smith Island boardinghouse was no restaurant. Guests ate at a set time. Meals were served at communal dinner tables. There wasn’t a menu to choose from – there was a smorgasbord of seafood soups or chowders; crab cakes; clam fritters; ham; hot rolls; stewed vegetables; pickled carrots; macaroni, bean or potato salads; corn pudding; iced tea. No one went hungry. Guests kept coming, and word spread. Frances Kitching achieved culinary fame on her own terms.
While some credit Kitching with the invention of Smith Island Cake, a recipe for the cake does not appear in the original 1981 edition of “Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Kitchen.” Still, there can be little debate that Kitching’s food was synonymous with Smith Island cooking. What began as a way to feed the men who were installing electricity on the secluded island in the 1950s became a force that attracted outsiders to experience life on Smith Island.
In a 1981 Washington Post article about Mrs. Kitching, food writer Joan Nathan declared that “Frances Kitching is a slow starter in the kitchen,” strolling into her world-famous kitchen with a cigarette, waiting until the last minute to prepare some fried fish. “The last minute is when she spies from her kitchen window the ‘Captain Jason’ ferry approaching,” Nathan wrote.
Frances Kitching in the Wilmington Evening Journal, 1978