Laurie Boucher told me that she always knew she wanted to study law. The vocation brought her from Pennsylvania to Baltimore, where she now resides. When Boucher needed more time to take care of family, she scaled back on lawyering, enrolled in culinary school, and began to master the art of pasta-making. As she shared…
My recipe explorations have exposed me to a fair amount of lifestyles of the wealthy, but this week’s family really takes the cake. Charlotte and Clifford Truesdell were known for dressing formally for dinner – Clifford in “lace collars and cuffs” and Charlotte in evening gowns, according to the Baltimore Sun Magazine in 1978. Clifford…
In 1894, Mrs. Charles H. Gibson, like Miss. Mary Lloyd Tyson and Mrs. Benjamin Chew Howard before her, got in on the trend of releasing a cookbook to share and boast her renowned hostessing and housekeeping skills. Like those other books “Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s Maryland and Virginia Cookbook” capitalized on the fame of Chesapeake…
Outside of the German peach cake, or the Indian chutney that made its way into Mrs. B.C. Howard’s recipe collection, non-English and African influences aren’t always obvious in the recipes I work from. A lot of cooking traditions were passed down orally in immigrant communities, or else handwritten recipe manuscripts of everyday citizens didn’t make…
The Southern Heritage Cookbook Library “Breakfast and Brunch” edition contains a menu for a “Maryland Spring Breakfast For Two.” The menu includes asparagus, fresh strawberries, cornmeal muffins and the pièce de résistance: ‘Shad Roe with Bacon.’ And this is how shad roe is best served. Simply and traditionally. Cook bacon; sautée onion; cook roe with…