• Oysters And Macaroni Au Gratin, Mrs. Robert Valliant

    In 1948, three recipes of the wife of one Robert Valliant appeared in the now-legendary community cookbook, one that has seen many reprints over the years: “A Cook’s Tour of the Eastern Shore.” The Valliant family lineage is so enmeshed into Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore that it was hard to determine which Robert Valliant I…

  • Spiced / Pickled Oysters

    “Mr. W. B. Burke of this city has the reputation of preparing the very best spiced oysters which leave our market, and if all are like the can which he left with us on Tuesday, his reputation is well deserved. They are truly a delightful article… He will forward them according to order to any…

  • Oyster Stew

    “A century ago in old New England and New York a bowl of piping hot oyster stew formed the traditional Christmas Eve supper, now practiced only by a few families who have preserved the tradition along with grandmother’s Chippendale and pewter… The homemakers of today would do well to revive this custom for the oyster…

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    Free State Oyster Omelet

    This recipe comes from a popular cookbook produced by the Maryland Seafood Marketing Authority. First produced in 1974, the book was developed with the aid of “state seafood home economist” Beverly Butler in order to “expand the role of the Chesapeake Bay seafood industry as a major contributor to the state’s economy.” At the time,…

  • Interview: Jay Fleming

    Marylanders love our watermen. They bring us crabs, after all. But for the most part our images of these people have crystallized into an idealized amalgam created from 50-year old photographs, crab-shack signs and stereotypes. The photography of Jay Fleming has been a welcome vehicle to update those images and to ponder the life and…